"Dion Graham's haunting narration reveals the heartbreaking costs paid by soldiers who experience the horror of trench warfare.… This is a gut-punch of an audiobook, made all the more affecting by Graham's intense and emotionally resonant delivery." —AudioFile Magazine
"Heartbreaking and poetic . . . [At Night All Blood Is Black] addresses a story woefully absent from French history books – the inner life of African troops who fought in the French trenches in the first world war." ―Angelique Chrisafis, The Guardian
"Diop’s short but emotionally packed second novel illuminates an underreported chapter in French and Senegalese history. 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 Reviews (starred review)
"[A] harrowing, nimbly translated English-language debut . . . Diop is sure to earn readers with this feverish exercise in psychological horror.” ―Publishers Weekly
"An extraordinary novel, full of sadness, rage and beauty." ―Sarah Waters, author of The Little Stranger
"David Diop’s All Blood is Black at Night is an unrelenting take on war, race, masculinity, and colonialism. Most of all, Diop’s short, sharp, and serrated novel is a visceral dramatization of how our humanity and inhumanity are forever intertwined." ―Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Sympathizer
"David Diop's At Night All Blood Is Black is a particularly pertinent reflection on the evils of war, as well as a profound exploration of the human soul." ―J.M.G. Le Clézio, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
"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. This is no war novel, but a book on what Montaigne called 'the solder of brotherhood.'" ―Tahar Ben Jelloun, Le Point
"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
★ 10/01/2020
"God's truth," says Alfa Ndiaye repeatedly, offering unexpected musical cadence to the harrowing tale he relates here. Along with "more-than-brother" Mademba Diop, Alfa is a Chocolat—an African soldier fighting with the French troops during World War I. When Mademba is mortally wounded, Alfa remains with him yet despite Mademba's pleas cannot bring himself to end his suffering. Thereafter, he decries his inhumanity in having dutifully listened to the voices of his ancestors rather than thinking for himself, a theme purveyed throughout the story. To avenge his friend—and exercise the sort of moral strength that initially failed him—Alfa takes to sneaking behind enemy lines at night, capturing a soldier, and cutting off his hand before dispatching him quickly. When he returns with the hands, his fellow soldiers initially greet him with awe but soon avoid him as a dëmm, a devourer of souls. Diop gracefully backtracks to the early friendship of the two men, with Alfa acknowledging his haughty behavior toward Mademba the morning of his death as the novel veers toward a transcendent ending for them both. VERDICT Paris-born, Senegalese-raised Diop's second novel is scalding, mesmerizing, and troubling in the best way. Highly recommended.
★ 2020-07-14
Alfa Ndiaye, a young Senegalese man recruited into the French army as a rifleman, confronts the madness of World War I and his role in that madness.
The book opens on a note of anguish, with Alfa recalling his shameful inability to help his childhood friend Mademba Diop, who was eviscerated on the battlefield. Mademba begged Alfa to end his suffering by slitting his throat, but Alfa couldn't bring himself to do that to his "more-than-brother." Tormented by the failure, Alfa took it out on the enemy by sneaking across "pools of blood" every night to gut German soldiers with his machete. At first, Alfa's fellow "Chocolats," as they were known, were impressed by his boldness and cunning. But his strange practice of bringing back each victim's severed hand with the rifle it fired convinced them he was an evil sorcerer. Alfa, who had never previously stepped outside his village, tells of his beautiful mother, who abandoned him when he was a boy to search for her father, a shepherd, and never returned; Alfa's own father, who had three other wives; and the village chief's daughter, who risked her father's wrath by making love to Alfa before he went off to war because, as he says, "to die without knowing all of the pleasures of the body isn’t fair." French West African writer Diop's short but emotionally packed second novel illuminates an underreported chapter in French and Senegalese history. Part folklore, part existential howl, and part prose poem, it is a heartbreaking account of pointless suffering. Ultimately, Alfa is left wondering why his physical power can't translate into "peace, tranquility and calm." Though God is ever present in Alfa's thoughts, he can't help but ask why God "lags behind us."
A searing, eye-opening tale of innocence destroyed.
