The Serpent à plumes reediting of Yambo Ouologuem’s Devoir de violence breathes new life into what now ranks as a Masterpiece of African literature or of literature in general. Following a thirty-year eclipse as a result of being pulled off from bookstore shelves for shady accusations of plagiarism, this reprint unveils a piece whose iconoclastic stance once generated critical controversy; centered on the History of the African continent, the novel stands out as unparalleled by the themes it deals with—themes which Praise Singers of traditional African societies never talk about — fables, the conquered, the marginalized lineage of slaves and captives. This paper shows how Ouologuem’s novel is woven from the subversion of the Canons of an epic novel and how, in doing so, it puts its readership in a sort of a bind forcing them to waver between being very naïve to being capable of capturing the reversed format of the epic.