To sum up Thélyson Orélien’s book (C’était ça ou mourir), I picture a man who has had a gallon of gasoline poured over him and then been set on fire, while people scream at him that there is a river two kilometers away that he must reach if he does not want to burn alive. So every second counts, and even Usain Bolt would not have stood a chance. Except that, with all the twists and turns, the river is 12,000 kilometers away, and we are not even sure it has not dried up.

This incredible subject had been sitting there for years, and the old writers, myself included, did not move until a young man picked it up and ran with it all the way to the finish line. It was the only truly global theme, besides being one that touches the body, pain, and scatters a string of injustices along its long journey. An endless cry winding its way from South America to North America. Chekhov had done the same thing in 1890, crossing vast Russia at the age of 30 to investigate Sakhalin Island, Siberia’s largest penal colony. Well, Orélien is not Chekhov, and nowhere does it say that he actually traveled the route, but he possesses that sure instinct for human suffering and a good subject for a novel.