Brutal and violent, but extremely well written. I would recommend this to any fans of historical fiction. It was really interesting to read about World War I from a perspective that isn't often depicted enough in contemporary fiction. I feel like you could write a really interesting PhD about this book!

This was a book I eagerly looked forward to. However, I could not finish it. The violent imagery, the somewhat repetitive nature of narration, and the constant comparison to female genitals was a total turnoff.

Disappointing because I expected so much more.

Incredibly moving and so intense, definitely a book to read in one go like a mad, fever drenched dream. So glad I read this.

This book is extremely hard to describe, really. I think the main take-away for me was that before reading it I had thought there was nothing much new to be said about WWI; I was definitely proven wrong. At Night All Blood is Black is about war, mental illness, racism, colonialism, revenge, brotherhood, sex (often disturbingly so), violence, and just... what war does to humans, which I’m aware makes it sound cliche (but it isn’t). I loved that it focused on Senegalese soldiers fighting for the French army - I didn’t even realise Senegalese units had been involved in WWI beforehand, and it gave a very different perspective on WWI because it wasn’t focused on white European soldiers.

The writing style is very simple and repetitive, which despite coming off as slightly grating at times, overall mostly worked. It really established the protagonist’s voice and the impression of being in his head, and the book is quite short so it didn’t accumulate enough to truly annoy me. That’s another thing worth mentioning: this book is very, very short, but also exactly as long as it needs to be.

A note on the ending: it wasn’t my absolute favourite because I generally don’t enjoy it when books end in a way that’s unexplained and intentionally difficult to understand. But after thinking on it for a while, I think ultimately it made sense to me and fitted the tone of the book, so I can’t really object. At Night All Blood is Black just made such a powerful impression on me, and it’s one of those books I’ll be thinking about for a long time.

Stunning. Emotional and brutally graphic examination of the realities of war. Really forceful consideration of the ethical realities and the fact that decisions are not as clear cut as we would like to believe.

Thank you to Netgalley, Pushkin Press and David Diop for this e-copy in return for my honest review. 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

"While others hid in the gaping wounds in the earth we called trenches, I stayed close to Mademba, I lay pressed against him, my right hand in his left hand, staring at the cold blue sky crisscrossed with metal. three times he asked me to finish him off, three times I refused."

David Diop's exploration of the horrors of war and colonialism is powerful and wrenching. 'At Night All Blood is Black' is the story of Alfa Ndiaye, a black Senegalese man fighting from France in the trenches of WW1 and his gradual, inevitable, fall into madness. The book is not afraid to delve into the horrors of war - those felt by all, and those particular to treatment of Senegalese soldiers by the white men they serve with.

"The captain told them that the enemy was afraid of savage Negroes, cannibals, Zulus, and they laughed. They're content if the enemy on the other side is afraid of them. They're content to forget their own fear ... The captain's France needs our savagery, and because we are obedient, me and the others, we play the savage."

The book highlights the awfulness of what soldiers are required by war to do: the casual murder of fellow human beings becomes a routine which must be switched off upon return to the home trenches, discipline enforced by the expedient method of sending soldiers out to face enemy guns with their hands tied behind their backs.

Diop's writing is stylized, and repetitive, echoing the external, routine, monstrosity of the war in the background, and the internal, private, madness, the 'secret laughter' into which Alfa descends.

Brilliantly written, I highly recommend it.

https://issuu.com/icpublications4/docs/na0621_lr
(New African – May/June 2021 – At Night All Blood is Black – see pages 66-67)

David Diop explores the traumatising effects of war in this novel about a Senegalese soldier, Alfa, who is fighting in the French trenches during the first world war. Parts of the book also reflect on Alfa's life back home in Senegal.
This book is incredibly powerful. The writing is wonderful, sometimes brutal but always poetic. We really get to see into the mind of Alfa as he loses his grip on reality when faced with the horrors of war. A very deserving winner of the Booker International prize.

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.
***** Thanks to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for this ARC

At Night All Blood is Black is a disturbing and dark text filled with violence. In this novel, the carnage of WW1 trench warfare and psychological deterioration of the narrator fill the pages. However, this novel also delves deeper than most war books as it covers grief, the urge for revenge and the effect of colonial and racial stereotypes within WW1.

There is a stylised oral narrative which works well within the text. The whole novel is an account of a man's descent into madness during war with memories of past times and places scattered within.

One negative however, is that I was not a fan of the use of overly sexualised female anatomy as metaphors. It felt a little jarring and not in keeping with the rest of the text and subject matter.

Thanks to Pushkin Press for an ARC in return for an honest review.

“Yes, I understood, God’s truth that in the battlefield they wanted only fleeting madness. Madmen of rage, madmen of pain, furious madmen but temporary ones. No continuous madmen. As soon as the fighting ends, we’re to file away our rage, our pain, and our fury. Pain is tolerated, we can bring our pain home on the condition that we keep it to ourselves. But rage and fury cannot be brought back to the trench. Before returning home, we must denude ourselves of rage and fury, we must strip ourselves of it, and if we don’t, we are no longer playing the game of war. Madness, after the captain blows the whistle to retreat, is taboo.”

War stories are so difficult to read but also so important, as history continues to repeat itself in some part of the world or the other.

The Senegalese Tirailleurs were a corps of colonial infantry in the French Army, initially recruited from Senegal and subsequently from other parts of Africa under the French colonial empire. At Night All Blood is Black is Diop’s dark and poetic rendition of a war song and tells the story of one young Senegalese soldier who completely unravels after his best friend, almost brother, is killed in the war. Written in the form of a prose poem full of dark humour and horror, it shows the unravelling of a soldier’s mind at a micro level and the futility and cruelty of war at a macro level.

“That’s war: it’s when God lags behind the music of men, when he can’t untangle the threads of so many fates at the same time.”

This particular war song will not leave me for a while.

A slim volume that packs some serious punch. At Night All Blood is Black examines the horrors of war from the perspective of an African soldier fighting during WW1. The imagery that Diop conjures up is at once beautiful and horrific examining the impact that witnessing a friend killed has on the narrator Alfa. The trauma experienced by Alfa numbs him into becoming a vehicle of revenge mimicking the inhumane slaughter of his friend in the killing of his enemy. The complete disregard for life, including his own, pushes Alfa into a moral vacuum which he is forced to address as the book progresses and which he may never come back from.

3.5*

Shortlisted for International Booker Prize 2021

As the name suggests, this novel is not about rainbows and unicorns, it is bloody and brutal. My return to literary fiction couldn’t have been steeper but I do not regret my choice.

After reading almost the whole Republic of Consciousness longlist, I got tired of bleakness and difficult prose so I decided to take a break. As such, my plan to read the whole Booker International shortlist was abandoned. However, I decided to try the titles that attract me the most. At Night All Blood Is Black captured my attention because it deals with a part of history I know nothing about. Also, it is very short and I got it from Netgalley from one of my favourite publishers so I felt responsible to review it.

The novel is set in the trenches of WW1 and had as main character, Alfa Ndiaye, a Senegalese black man, part of a „Chocolate” army fighting for the French. Unable to mercy kill his badly wounded friend he descend into madness and starts to murder his enemies in gruesome ways. After the deed he takes one of their severed hands as trophy. The French use the racist stereotypes of the African soldiers as being savage and sorcerers to scare the German enemies so at first, Alfa’s revenge killings are praised as part of the act. After the hands start to pile, the rest of the French army begin to feel frightened. It shows how war can dehumanize people and how they were butchered in the trenches with almost no chance to survive.

The prose is terrifying, violent, graphic, repetitive which makes it even more atmospheric but also poetic. I preferred the 2nd part more, where we learn some background information about the two characters before the war. It is an intense novel and it should be read in on go, not like I did, 10 pages now and then. One of the most unsettling parts of this novel was the repetitive use of sexual metaphors to describe the trenches. I am not sure what the goal was but the effect was quite disgusting. I might not have understood the ending either.

Some interesting thoughts about translations: “To translate is never simple. To translate is to betray at the borders, it’s to cheat, it’s to trade one sentence for another. To translate is one of the only human activities in which one is required to lie about the details to convey the truth at large. To translate is to risk understanding better than others that the truth about a word is not single, but double, even triple, quadruple, or quintuple. To translate is to distance oneself from God’s truth, which, as everyone knows or believes, is single.”

3,5
Very intense novel about the horrors of war and a man going mad because of it. I was impressed by it, but at the same time there were also some things I didn’t quite like.
The repetitive style didn’t always work for me, as in the poor description of Alfa’s sexual experiences and I found the comparison of the trenches to women’s genitals rather inappropriate.
Thank you Pushkin Press and Netgalley for the ARC.

It is unfair to write this without having read the entire shortlist, but At Night All Blood is Black has serious International Booker Prize-winning potential. David Diop’s novel, in translation by Anna Moschovakis, is a short, sharp and utterly mesmerising work of literature that is as painful as it is compelling to read, a book that deals unflinchingly with madness and war, but also – with heartbreaking tenderness – with love and the untrammelled hopefulness of youth. Written in urgent yet lyrical prose that makes the events it describes both horrifyingly vivid and hard to turn away from, At Night All Blood is Black is the darkest and most revealing of fever dreams, a novel that gives just as much as it demands of its reader.

[A full review is available on my blog.]

This is a challenging read. This is the story of two Senegalese soldiers , Alfa and Mademba “conscripted “ to join the French army in World War I. From their homes to the battlefield, the futility and violence of war is laid bare and following the death of Mademba, Alfa seeks retribution in a shocking manner. The language describes the tragedy of war yet captivates in an almost poetic style. A worthy international Booker prize nominee that holds a light up to a forgotten group of men within history and the sacrifice they made.

A powerful, visceral short novel now shortlisted for the International Booker prize. As news media reported last week on unmarked graves of countless soldiers from Britain’s colonies who fought and died in WW1, I started reading At Night All Blood is Black, about Senegalese soldiers who fought and died for France in the trenches of the Western Front.

The Chocolats, as they were derogatorily known are pretty much used as wind-up savages, their white French commanding officers sending them out, rifle in the left, machete in the right hand screaming, to terrorise German soldiers, who feared death, savagery, rape, cannibalism at their hands. After witnessing the slow, excruciating death of his childhood friend, his ‘more than brother’ Mademba, the narrator Alfa snaps, slowly descending into madness as he seeks revenge for his fallen friend. But while temporary madness is encouraged: “Temporary madness makes it possible to forget the truth about bullets. Temporary madness, in war, is bravery’s sister.”, after the battle, the wind-up savages should neatly go back into their boxes: “As soon as the fighting ends, we’re to file away our rage, our pain, and our fury… Madness, after the captain blows the whistle to retreat, is taboo.” Alfa’s comrades increasingly become afraid of him, seeing him as dëmm, a “devourer of souls”, “an eater of the insides of men”.

Alfa tells his story in simple language (very well translated by Anna Moschovakis). Repetition gives rhythm to the storytelling, it has a flow of a prose-poem. The imagery is stark and often disturbingly sexualised with trenches likened to female sex while rumour is brazen and spread-legged. At Night All Blood is Black is a compelling indictment of dehumanising effects of war as well as of colonial racism and exploitation.

My thanks to Pushkin Press and Netgalley for the opportunity to read At Night All Blood is Black. Highly recommended.

"You have to be careful, when you believe you're free to think about what you want, not to let in the thinking of others, in disguise, the false thinking of your father and mother, the spurious thinking of your grandfather, the masked thinking of your brother or sister, of your friends, in other words, of your enemies"

War stories have a major role in maintaining our sense of perspective in the modern world. Stories of seperation, grief, reunion, joy; we've heard it all. What about stories on the battlefield? What of the emotions and mental trauma a soldier goes through? This book aims to make that available to us, a soldier's story from the warfront.

Poetic, heartbreaking and entirely enlightening, 'At Night All Blood is Black' focusses on a singular human emotion: REGRET. It talks about a lesser known part of the ugly side of the war; the story of a West African man who fought for France during World War 2.

It is the story of the awakening of a man who lost his bestfriend in the war, and the build-up of regret in his body because he thinks he was the reason for his friend's prolonged suffering. That's the effect death has on us; we think of reasons to pile the blame on us because there's nothing we can do about inevitability.

There are in general 7 stages of grief: denial, guilt, anger, depression, the upward turn, reconstruction and acceptance. All of us must have encountered grief personally or through a second-hand account, so we know how a person develops from each stage and pulses through. But in this story, the protagonist goes through the same stages of grief, but takes a different turn such that the overall development we see in him is improbable and at the same time beautiful, which is why this book provides an important message.

It tells us that nothing is general in life, nothing is foreseen or foretold, and so life is unexpected. We can and should never expect a person to recover just as we did. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder goes a long way, and it is up to us to embrace it or leave it be.

Another concept this book talks about is the freedom of thought. It tells us that not one human on Earth is free to think, because all of our thoughts are influenced by the people around us. When we finally break free from the mainstream thought process, we're labelled hysterical. Freedom and being human is thus paradoxical.

David Diop did an amazing job in putting his thoughts in such a fantastic manner with proper emphasis at the right lines, and hats off to Anna Moshovakis for making sure that even in translation, the essence of the book was maintained.

For fans of the movie 1971 and otherwise, this book is must read!

At night all blood is black is a short and visceral novel, immersing you in the thoughts of an African soldier fighting for the French in the First World War. Violent, disturbing and ultimately moving, Diop takes us into the heart of the battle, and then into a period of rehabilitation. The central character also reflects on his childhood in Senegal (?) and his first love / sexual awakening, and the contrast with his best friend who he could neither save nor bring a swift end to his suffering.

The ending initially threw me, but on reflection (and this book has been in my thoughts for 24hrs now) there is an unexpected beauty.

I’ve struggled to describe this well. Don’t listen to me, just read this