A total, whirlwind, conquering adventure novel, a true machinery of the imagination where all the codes of romance and popular literature intertwine and collide, between the historical past and projection into the future, our programmed obsessions and our dreams of irrepressible escapes. Martial Canterel, a wealthy opium addict, allows his reconstruction of the famous Battle of Gaugamela to be interrupted by his old friend Holmes (John Shylock...). A fabulous diamond, the Anankè, has been stolen from Lady MacRae, while three right feet wearing Anankè sneakers washed up on the Scottish coast, very close to her castle... So here are Holmes, his butler and the aristocratic dandy, soon flanked by Lady MacRae and her daughter Verity, swept away - to begin with - on the Trans-Siberian in pursuit of the elusive Noh Straddle. Through a jubilant mise en abyme, this bouncy plot is set in the vagaries of a cigar factory in the Périgord Noir where, as in the Caribbean, the tradition of reading aloud the adventures of Jean Valjean or Monte Cristo is perpetuated. Soon taken over by Monsieur Wang, a high-tech voyeur and founder of B@bil Books, an e-reader assembly plant... With abrasive irony, this tsunami-novel sweeps away all the usual realistic constructions and opens extraordinary horizons of fiction. This wild novelistic escapade is also the most piquant reflection on literary art, coupled with a radical critique of ideologies and anonymous, sprawling governance, which alienates us even in our intimacy. Born in 1954 in Sidi-Bel-Abbès, he is the author, published by Zulma, of the monumental Là où les tigres sont chez eux (Fnac Novel Prize, Giono Prize and Médicis Prize 2008), of La Montagne de minuit and of the collection of short stories La Mémoire de riz.