Reviews: At Night All Blood is Black (9)

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 reality has completely slipped, but the genius of Diop is that he makes madness seem a perfectly reasonable response to war, to being taken from Africa to the trenches of WW1 and being told to kill Germans. The hypocrisy of the system that asks men to be brutal at short intervals decided by the blow of a whistle and then expects them to 'behave like soldiers' the rest of the time starts to seem like the work of lunatics, not Alfa's brutal embrace of death and revenge.

It's harrowing and really very sad, but important and impeccably achieved. Highly recommended.

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 around World War I / The Great War – mainly concentrating on the factors that lead to its outbreak, but some covering something of the War as well. One thing that becomes clear if you study the War (but is perhaps a lot less clear from more standard accounts and most fiction on the topic) is the extent of non-white involvement particularly in the British and French armies.

One of the most interesting books I read was “Attrition” by William Phlipott, one of its key themes (from my 2014 review) is that “from very early on it was inevitable that given the current state of technology and the existential nature of the war, the land war would largely be an attritional battle of numbers – destroying or capturing the enemies key war resource (i.e. soldiers) to the extent that they could no longer sustain the battle” One aspect of this was the advantage held by England and France in being able to raise troops from their Empires (for example the Sepoys in the British Army), the book stating that “The availability of imperial manpower resources allowed the Entente states to keep expanding their war efforts after Germany’s had reached its peak”. The book points out that a French General Charles Magnin had argued even pre-war, in an influential treatise, that a French imperial manpower reserve “The Force Noire” should be developed as a counterweight to Germany’s larger population and that as the war progressed the West African battalions became more and more crucial to the French war effort.

And this is a novel about those forces – the “Chocolat” soldiers – and two soldiers in particular: Alfa Ndiaye and his “closer than a brother” friend Mademba Diop. The novel begins with one of its many difficult to read scenes, with Mademba dying slowly in agony in no man’s land, his guts literally in his hands, with Alfa refusing, on what he later realises is mistaken principle, his friends pleas to end his agony by cutting his throat.

Another history book I read was the popular military historian Max Hastings “Catastrophe: Europe Goes To War 1914”. That book gave much less coverage to the West Africans that fought for the French other than in a rather gratuitous section on war brutality which mention a story of a column of escorted German PoW’s being “beset by Senegalese troops determined to cut off the German’s ears”, before following up with a reference to a French army Chaplin in a field hospital complaining about the lack of civilisation of the West Africans being treated (“while applauding the terror the colonial infantry inspired among the Germans”).

However gratuitous, this story acts as a very close analogy to the subsequent story of Alfa. On the way back to the trenches, carrying Mademba’s body something switches in his mind (what we might now categorise as PTSD) – the first sign he recognises himself is that he suddenly views the trenches in a highly sexualised way; but the more serious consequence is that he takes to hanging back after the retreat is sounded with the aim of hamstringing a German soldier with his machete, dragging him to no-mans land , slicing his belly and then cutting his throat after only a short period as soon as the soldier pleads for release – effectively recreating Mademba’s death with a different ending. Even more gruesomely he cuts the hand from his victim and takes it back with him to the trenches.

At first his savagery and the fear it must strike in the enemy makes him something of a hero, even among the white soldiers, but soon the stench of death he carries makes him a pariah even among his fellow Africans – at which point he is sent to a field hospital for recovery.

There – in what is the real heart of the novel - we learn more of his life in Africa, his mother and father, his relationship to Mademba and his first sexual experience just before his travel to Africa, and a tour de force ending reunites him with Mademba.

Overall this is a harrowing but compelling novel of brotherhood in war (something I think better captured by the French title), very naturally translated by Anna Moschovakis.

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 sound of the whistle to attack the German enemy. When Mademba is wounded begging for mercy in death, Alfa is left alone his heart broken, his mind and moral compass corrupted. He throws himself into the dark, writhing belly of war, its violence and savagery. Alfa’s actions and behaviour begin to frighten his fellow comrades, who believe he is possessed by the dëmm or devil. The prose is both beautiful and brutal. It’s repetitive nature both hypnotic and unnerving. As a reader you witness a man with an innocent soul and clear mind become transformed by the brutality and violence of war as enacted by the enemy and his own commanders causing him to descend into madness and vengeance. An unforgettable story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy of this book.

Stunningly both beautiful and ugly, this novel is painfully short but makes quite an impression in the space of its 145 pages. Well worthy of winning the Booker international prize.
It’d get 5 stars if it was longer.

True, David Diop's 'At Night All Blood is Black' re-approaches the more-than-ever topical issues of race, and colonialism, in a powerful, even brutal manner, via the angle of two soldiers who came from Senegal to fight on the Western front in the First World War. Yet, Diop's book is so much more than a take on the consequences of colonialism: it is also a reflexion on the humanity and inhumanity of warfare --- on what it may mean to be truly "human" from the point of view of a young man caught in one of history's bloodiest conflicts. As a social being brought into the trenches to uphold the noble virtues of honour, duty and sacrifice, Alfa quickly finds himself undoing the warped process of thought that underpins the martial slaughter. The writing is fluid and easy, has a rhythmic and cyclical quality that renders well the pace of the soldier's thought, and his spiralling descent into despair. This is a short, incredibly sharp novel, brilliantly translated. A wonderful choice for the 2021 International Booker Prize.

I read this during the last lockdown and it truly is one of those novels that haunts you and stays with you. It is a harrowing and visceral story of war, brotherhood and trauma, but most importantly it gives a timely insight into the largely untold first-hand experiences of colonial forces during the First World War. While there have been some histories written, it is so special to see this shown through the lens of fiction, as it gives us an extra view of how later generations have dealt with and currently understand the catastrophes that their ancestors endured. All in all, it will be a book that I will thoroughly recommend for a very long time!

This book is easy to read in one sitting,BUT it is not an easy read.translated from French this International Man Booker Prize winner is brutal and bloody.Alfa is a Senegalese solider fighting in the trenches for the French during World War 1,he is a number of 'Chololat' soldiers recruited to fight from their colonies.War is bad enough but when he sees his friend who is 'closer than a brother' killed in a brutal way it seems to tip him over the edge,when they are ordered to advance he goes but when ordered back he doesn't ,he stays to find a stray enemy then eviscerates them cutting of a hand attached to a rifle.His colleagues treat him as a hero when he brings back his first three but after the fourth they become wary of him and when he brings back the seventh 'blue' eyes hand he is ordered to go behind and rest.When doing this he reminisces on hos life back in the village and the girl who gave her self to him when he left.
This tale is both brutal and touching,not for the squeamish.

This book was amazing! it depicts the atrocity that soldiers had to go through during the war very well.

The main character sees his friend suffering and slowly dying on the battlefield, but refuses to kill him as it is judged immoral. This guilt will eat him alive and lead him to madness and perpetual harm to others. I love that the ending was open to interpretation too!

"God's truth" repeats the protagonist, again and again and again. His "more-than-brother" has been killed in the trenches of the First World War, his insides hanging outside. The repetitive nature of the language used in this wonderfully brutal book gives the story a hallucinogenic, almost mythical quality as we follow the exploits of a Senegalese soldier fighting for France come to terms with the loss of his childhood companion. The full savagery of the conflict is illustrated in sometimes unbearably frank prose, detailing the blood, guts and munitions that lacerate the bodies, minds and landscape of everything caught within the maelstrom. As the action veers away from the front, we are invited into the world of a rural, colonised Senegal and the childhoods of the brothers-in-arms. From here, the novel crescendos into almost scriptural allegory, paving the way for an unforgettable, transcendent ending that will have you questioning the philosophical and spiritual essence of the story long after you've finished reading. A more than worthy entry in the International Booker Prize shortlist, which, if it were to win, would add to an already illustrious list of accolades that Diop has already collected.

I read this book with my heart in my mouth. It is absolutely stunning. It showcases the horrors of war and how its ethics are anything but black and white. I hope its a huge success

It was hard to put the book down. A fascinating short read about brotherhood during the war.

Weaving with ancestor's voices

A powerful novella highlighting the disconnect between the colonizers and the colonized. Told in a highly-stylized, formulaic language reminiscent of the mnemonic repetitions of Griot stories (And oral culture folktales from around the world), it micro-focusses on the way that Senegalese soldiers fighting for France are forced to fight against their own inner selves in order to take pat in a war that is not theirs.