Annabella Morelli, born in the Congo, lives in Lyon, studies at university, and dreams of becoming a poet. When news arrives of the death of her father, a French citizen who left for Africa to work and then settled there, she decides to transport his body—and encounters bureaucracy, corruption, and a difficult family legacy (her mother, a Black woman, was forced to abandon her young daughter and flee domestic violence). Interweaving autobiography and fiction, Guerra creates a narrative of loss and coming of age: the heroine moves between France, where she was happy as a child, and Africa, which holds the bitterness of memories.