The disturbing tale of two Senegalese friends and soldiers in the Great War and the urge to madness and revenge that subsumes one when the other is killed, Diop’s astonishing novel is both a tribute to friendship and a passionate condemnation of armed conflict.
Winner of the International Booker Prize 2021
Alfa and Mademba are two of the many Senegalese soldiers fighting in the Great War. Together they climb dutifully out of their trenches to attack France's German enemies whenever the whistle blows, until Mademba is wounded, and dies in a shell hole with his belly torn open.
Without his more-than-brother, Alfa is alone and lost amidst the savagery of the conflict. He devotes himself to the war, to violence and death, but soon begins to frighten even his own comrades in arms. How far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend?
At Night All Blood is Black is a hypnotic, heartbreaking rendering of a mind hurtling towards madness.
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 9781782277538
Number of pages: 160
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
Language: English (Language of text), French (Original language of a translated text)
So incantatory and visceral I don't think I'll ever forget it - Ali Smith, Guardian
An extraordinary novel, full of sadness, rage and beauty - Sarah Waters
More than a century after World War I, a great new African writer [has written] a spare yet extraordinary novel about this bloody stain on human history - Chigozie Obioma, New York Times Book Review
A stunning book for our times: poetically gripping, it has lodged itself deeply into my consciousness - Philippe Sands, author of East West Street and The Ratline
We agreed that its incantatory prose and dark brilliant vision had jangled our emotions and blown our minds, that it cast a spell on us - Lucy Hughes-Hallett, International Booker Prize jury
An intense exploration of the dehumanising effect of war and colonialism. This slight book explodes with extraordinary force - readers will not forget it in a hurry - The Times, Historical Fiction Book of the Month
An unrelenting take on war, race, masculinity, and colonialism... Diop's short, sharp, and serrated novel is a visceral dramatization of how our humanity and inhumanity are forever intertwined - Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer
A vital decolonisation of the narrative tyranny of the Great War - Ben Okri
A brilliant shifting tale... deserves the bouquets and trumpets - Observer
A gripping, twisty account of industrial warfare, colonialism, violence, youth and friendship - Guardian
This heartbreaking and poetic novel addresses a story woefully absent from French history books - Guardian
Part folklore, part existential howl, and part prose poem, it is a heartbreaking account of pointless suffering... A searing, eye-opening tale of innocence destroyed - Kirkus (starred review)
Diop pitches us - head-first and mid-thought - into Alfa's whorling stream of consciousness. I'm not sure I breathed again for the next two hours - European Literature Network
Powerfully original and gripping - The Times, Best Paperbacks of 2021
A novel of lacerating power - Libération
Dark, powerful and hypnotic... Breathtaking! - Livres Hebdo
With its oral styles, its mantra-like repetitions, At Night All Blood is Black captivates more surely than a classic war novel [and] gives a voice to those we have seldom heard speak before - Le Figaro
This novel is a wonder. Written in a simple, almost naive, yet astonishing style, it speaks of the tragedy of the trenches with a moving delicacy - Tahar Ben Jelloun, Le Point
A powerful, truthful look at the meaningless horror of war from the perspective of those whose experience as soldiers from colonial countries has been so undervalued and unexplored - Culturefly
A short, powerful novel... Diop presents a world with no firm dividing line between courage and madness, murder and warfare; the most dedicated killers are awarded the Croix de Guerre. Alfa's final transformation, as he attempts to atone for his guilt over the death of his friend, is unexpected, poetic - and chilling - Spectator
The ending leaves me open mouthed - Ian McMillan, BBC Radio 3's The Verb
Visceral, harrowing, yet absolutely riveting - Refinery 29
Scalding, mesmerizing, and troubling in the best way - Library Journal
This haunting tale of a Senegalese man's experience in WWI is a poetic look at the horrors of war and its effect on mental health - Buzzfeed
Has an incomparable literary force - Libraire
A powerfully rhythmic style, at once classic and contemporary, strewn with strong, evocative imagery - L'Humanité
A plunge into the horrors of war. A philosophical inquiry into betrayal and loyalty. But also a book emigration, a voyage into the sorrow-crushed soul of the one who chooses to leave, and a magnificent parable on the impossibility of return - Les Inrockuptibles
Interweaves the inexpressible cruelty of the battlefield with a beautiful ode to universal friendship - Le Journal du dimanche
A particularly pertinent reflection on the evils of war, as well as a profound exploration of the human soul - J.M. Le Clézio, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
David Diop here erects a beautiful monument to the Senegalese riflemen, and seeks to restore their African dimension; to listen to them, to understand them - Mathias Énard, Le Monde
A dark story told in lyrical prose... Rhythmic, enchanting fiction - The AV Club
Diop is sure to earn readers with this feverish exercise in psychological horror - Publishers Weekly
The moral scope is immense... It's our human duty to read this book... Listen to this voice that takes us into the madness of massive violence - The Historical Novels Review
A slim but stunning narrative of history, race, brotherhood, storytelling, and war - Book Marks
Haunting... Diop manages to question representations of black soldiers dictated by colonial stereotypes - in order to dismantle them - The Conversation
'A powerful examination of comradeship and violence' - Financial Times
Diop's spare prose [is] rendered beautifully in Moschovakis's absorbing translation [and] it covers a range of themes and issues without the slightest hint of hectoring - The New European
Diop has mixed graphic violence with mystical rumination and traditional storytelling to create a work that is as much a prose poem as a novella... [It is also] an opportunity to hear a lyrical imagining of a voice seldom heard - TLS
'David Diop manages to recount a war he never experienced with the intimacy of a witness. His slim novel turns what little is known about African soldiers' involvement in World War I into a potent testimony on violence and guilt' - Emmanuel Iduma, New York Review of Books
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An unbelievably powerful book, a startling portrayal of the lunacy of war and a brutal evisceration of the colonial world and its aftermath. Its a rare book that can make you identity with someone whose grasp on... More
Longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize, one of two books by Pushkin Press – who publish “the world’s best stories, to be read and read again.”.
In 2014 I spent much of the Summer reading non-fiction books...
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At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop is a stunning, visceral short novel. Alfa and Mademba are two Senegalese soldiers, more-than-brothers fighting in the Great War. They rise dutifully from the trenches at the... More
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