Sunday June 5 2022, at the Chellah Hall of the International Publishing and Book Fair, held under the high  patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, lovers of African literature had a the great pleasure of meeting the Senegalese writer, Khalil Diallo, for the presentation of his latest work entitled "The Odyssey of the Forgotten", published in August 2021, by Emmanuelle Collas publishings.

“The Odyssey of the Forgotten” presents an uncompromising face of today's Africa, written in a rich and poetic language to portray religious wars, territorial conflicts, racism, patriarchy and modern slavery. An Africa in search of more spirituality, more tolerance and peace is what Khalil Diallo hopes for. Sufism can be a peaceful gateway to this writer.

"Sufism provides me with the peace and perspective needed to see the world with empathy. This is what helped me become a writer," he says. To be a poet, again according to Diallo, one must be an idealist. Poetry softens the soul.

Diallo describes novelists as historians of the present. This is another way of saying that he will not change the world, but he has the means of awakening people's consciousness to what surrounds them. "The novelist is an observer who transfigures through aesthetic work, through his thoughts and ideas," he concludes.