Khalid Lyamlahy belongs to the category of authors with a scientific education who end up being drawn back to their first passion, writing and literature. After studying engineering and a career in project management in Paris, he began studying literature by correspondence in 2009.

A literary critic and specialist in writing, Khalid Lyamlahy has published academic articles in various journals. He says that, following this experience, he wanted to ‘break away from the writing circle to reach a wider audience’ and publish fiction novels that would give him the opportunity to express social issues.

He believes that we don't choose what we write about, it's the subjects that make us who we write about’. Back in 2017, ‘’like everyone else, I was following the tragic story of the young Gambian refugee Pateh Sabally, who had jumped into the icy waters of the Grand Canal in Venice and was drowning in front of everyone's eyes”. He was shocked by the scene, and felt that for him, both literally and figuratively, this act was ‘a drowning in indifference, racism and collective defeat’.

“I travelled to Venice on several occasions to get signs that would enable me to express myself on this tragedy. I put myself in Pateh's field of vision, with three flags, those of Italy, Veneto and the European Union with its stars, and I watched the videos of the people around him, those who were outraged, who were taking photos or who were trying to save him’. So the story of this book grew out of one discovery after another, encouraging him to examine ‘the tragedies of Africa and the way Africans arrived in Europe, where they were humiliated, looked down on, and condescended to”.

‘Seeing Venice and dying will no longer have the same resonance after reading this novel,’ concluded Younès Ajarraï.