3 "repetitious, organic, burdening" stars !!

Thank you to the author, Netgalley, and Farrar, Strauss & Giroux for an ecopy. This was released November 2020 and has won numerous prizes including the International Booker Prize of 2021.

This is a very heavy book full of violence, unjust colonialism and ties to African ancestry. There are many themes and stories to unpack. The prose is poetic and repetitious. A hypermasculinity pervades. A psyche is deeply damaged but remains proud, bold and leonine.

I found this novel (despite its brevity) very difficult to connect to, empathize (or even sympathize) despite intellectually pushing to understand the depth of Senegalese male experience and the many challenges and injustices. I did manage to push through(reluctantly) but my reading experience was only fair at best. I acknowledge that the failure is my own and am very glad that this novel has received many accolades...

“The ones I might have told my secret thoughts to, my brothers-in-arms who will be left so disfigured, maimed, eviscerated, that God will be ashamed to see them show up in Paradise and the Devil will be happy to welcome them to Hell, will never know who I really am.”

“Don’t tell me that we don’t need madness on the battlefield. God‘s truth, the mad fear nothing. The others, white or black, play at being mad, perform madness so that they can calmly throw themselves in front of the bullets of the enemy on the other side. It allows them to run straight at death without being too afraid.”

Alfa Ndiaye and Mademba Diop are childhood friends from Senegal. They are “Chocolat” soldiers fighting with the French army against the Germans in World War I. When Mademba is mortally wounded he repeatedly begs Alfa to kill him. Alfa, respecting human law and the teachings of his parents, refuses to kill Mademba and he is consumed by guilt and driven to madness by his failure to act humanely. He begins sneaking out each night, torturing and killing German soldiers and cutting off their hands which he preserves. His fellow soldiers initially think he is heroic, but they soon sense his madness and he is eventually sent to the rear.

This was a beautifully written, devastating description of the horrors of war. If you are extremely squeamish you might want to skip this. It is also a vivid depiction of insanity. There are African fables and flashbacks to life in Senegal. I never got the feeling that this book was translated, so the translator, Anna Moschovakis, must have done a very good job. Dion Graham, the narrator of the audiobook, also did an excellent job.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

This book was interesting. I really enjoyed the story overall but it could have been better. I would definitely read something from this author in the future though.

I read this in just a couple of sittings. I was intrigued with every decision that was made. This was multi layered and had so many different ways to view it and make meaning from it.

This is a novel that is both subtle and compelling. It tells the story of an African legionnaire who served in the trenches of World War I. The story follows Alfa Ndiaye as he attempts to rationalize his actions. Even his fellow African soldiers are afraid of him. Ndiaye must also shed his image as a savagery-loving, bloodthirsty, and devilish man. The violent encounters are rendered with such artistic quality that one can hardly resist reading about them. Throughout this book, Diop explores the full range of human suffering in the trenches. He also brings us into the depths of Hell. This book isn’t very long, but my goodness what a ride. As you approach the end you the story has turns into a mystical, esoteric, and ultimately transcendent work. I read this book last year and every now and then I find myself thinking about it, if you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend it.

My starred review for Shelf Awareness is here: https://www.shelf-awareness.com/readers-issue.html?issue=974#m17041

The review was also cross-posted to Smithsonian BookDragon: http://smithsonianapa.org/bookdragon/at-night-all-blood-is-black-by-david-diop-in-shelf-awareness/

"Temporary madness makes it possible to forget the truth about bullets. Temporary madness, in war, is bravery's sister."

David Diop's "At Night All Blood is Black" opens with a searingly brutal scene: Narrator Alfa Ndiaye, an African legionnaire fighting for France in WWI, lies in No Man's Land next to his friend and "more-than-brother" Mademba Diop and, unable to assent to Mademba's desperate pleas and slit his throat, watches him die a slow and painful death after being disemboweled. This opening scene, and the overwhelming sense of guilt that Ndiaye suffers afterwards, color the rest of this slim and powerful novel. Haunted by his inaction, Ndiaye, in the warped logic of wartime, decides to make amends by sneaking out each night to disembowel a "blue-eyed" German soldier and bring the German's severed hand back to the trench. After eight nights of this--during which Ndiaye's fellow soldiers grow more and more uneasy with his savagery--Ndiaye is sent to a psychological hospital, where he is asked to focus on memories of his past life in his Senegalese village in an effort to cleanse "the filth of war from inside my head." While the battlefield scenes in "At Night All Blood is Black" are visceral and disturbing, it was these hospital flashbacks, which brought village culture to vivid life, that made this novel so memorable for me. The ending, which takes a sudden turn into mysticism, was not entirely successful for me, but it didn't diminish the power of the central question of "At Night All Blood is Black": How do you determine madness in a war which is, itself, mad?

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

Revising history is seldom a simple feat. One has to consider what has been told, how it has been presented and, most importantly, who has been controlling the narrative. David Diop attempts to wrestle this alteration of history in his novel, At Night All Blood is Black, by creating a dark fictional account of the French army during the First World War. Diop’s account is so detailed that I could imagine myself reading it as a historical first-person account.

Diop’s novel centers around a facet of French history that has been typically overlooked by history books: the life of African troops who fought for France in the trenches, during the First World War. These soldiers were recruited from all over West Africa, but their perspectives are pointedly missing among letters and accounts from French soldiers. Diop creates a narrative for this missing piece through the protagonist Alfa Ndiaye, who has been sent to war with his best friend Mademba. After witnessing Mademba’s death, Alfa takes revenge by killing opponent German soldiers, cutting off their hands, and keeping them as trophies. The novel follows Alfa during his time in the trenches through to his struggle to unravel the person the war transformed him into.

Throughout the novel Diop demonstrates the theme of rivalry, both between the French army and their opponents at war, as well as between Alfa and the non-African soldiers. There is a constant argument against reverting the war to a “good versus evil” debate. However, Diop ensures that the narrative isn’t encompassed by trivial rivalry. Through Alfa’s mental deterioration as the narrative progresses, Diop argues that everyone loses in war.

The novel begins in the middle of a battle, and the reader is automatically thrown into the trenches. We see the tragedy of witnessing a death for, what it seems like to Alfa, no reason at all. The search for someone to blame is embedded into Alfa’s story. Diop writes: “they want someone to blame, they’d rather think that the enemy bullet that hits them was directed, guided by someone cruel, malevolent, with evil intent.” Diop enhances the theme through Alfa’s grotesque removal of fellow soldiers’ hands, a symbol of his search for blame in the endless mass of identical soldiers. The war has infected him, and he has departed from who he was before.

The theme of revenge allows Diop to display war as a disease, something that infects individuals, and transforms them into an unrecognizable creature. Through gruesome scenes of Alfa acquiring dead soldier’s hands, Diop’s (and well translated by Moschovakis) hypnotic prose enhances how poisonous and all-encapsulating war is for these soldiers.

However, there were points where the graphic prose pulled me out of the narrative. This was particularly in scenes where Diop would use repellent imagery regarding women, seldom when an actual woman was present. The most obvious offender was when a trench is described as the “slightly parted lips of an immense woman’s sex,” which was more difficult for me to stomach than the slow, bloody deaths of soldiers surrounding the narrative. This is minor in comparison to Alfa grappling with what he’s done – still this aspect made me squirm.

In this novel, war is the primary evil. Diop creates an extremely humanistic approach to the high stakes setting as the themes throughout the novel push for more than a “black and white” interpretation of the First World War. The novel is set on creating a new “grey area” that history books have been neglectful of, allowing for a retelling of history from a voice we seldom hear.

Alfa and Mademba, the very best of friends, are two young men from Senegal that join the army to fight with the French during World War One. They end up fighting in the trenches and when Medemba suffers a fatal stomach wound, he pleads with Alfa three times to cut his throat and end his suffering. Alfa can not do this. After Mademba dies, Alfa gets his revenge by stalking the enemy every night and killing one soldier. From this dead soldier her hacks off a hand and returns with that and the rifle of the dead soldier. The first few times he does this, his fellow soldiers cheer him and celebrate him, but as Alfa keeps doing this, he’s seen as some sort of possessed demon that may bring ruin to them all. Alfa’s superior sends him on leave for a month and Alfa can finally clear his mind and remember the life that he and Mademba left behind in Senegal.

This is a much different take on a World War I Western Front story. Alfa, a Senegalese soldier, is fighting for the French. Throughout the story, he has two horrid memories, that of not killing his best friend who was mortally wounded in battle, and instead letting him die a slow painful death. And because of that, he turns his vengeance on “the blue-eyed monster.” I finished the book but it was so harrowing as I watched him descend into his own inner hell and eventually end up in a field sanitarium that it will take a strong reader to read this book which has a very powerful message.

Diop explores a little known aspect of WWI- the role of Africans conscripted to fight for France, known as chocolate, in return for citizenship. Ndaiye, a young Senegalese, descends into madness after spending hours and hours beside his friend Mademba who, mortally wounded, begs and begs Ndaiye to finish him off. Ndaiye spins out and is removed to a field hospital. No spoilers from me but know that this is wrenching in so many ways. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It's a short, well written and translated, and often difficult read but a worthy one.

Woah. I'm find that I'm left stunned upon finishing this book. It has a beautiful and stunning duality that runs through the core of the story, connecting thoughts, emotions, and events that may appear independent of one another but are deeply and intrinsically connected.

You find yourself transported alongside Alfa and Mademba and the narration reads like a confessional. It is as though you are sitting with them and listening as they talk and talk and talk. It begins with such a genuine ardour that devolves into mania; it's nearly impossible to look away. The stylistic repetition add to the confessional-esque feeling: "I know, I understand," and "God's truth" are such elements. Yet there is a secondary meaning to these repetitions, as though Alfa is trying to convince himself of the truth and of the events as he experienced them. Even as a reader, you too begin to wonder what is real and what is imagined and what is felt.

David Diop constructs the harsh world of the trenches and the stretches of impersonal ground in no-man's-land without needing to go into excruciating expository detail. There is a definite knack to the presentation and expression of this world; without adding unnecessary information, you can see and feel the story and setting.

I loved the narrative style and the pace of the story. I was constantly engaged and didn't have frequent moments of wanting just to be done with it. AT NIGHT ALL BLOOD IS BLACK is well-structured and beautifully written. Anna Moschovakis provides a stunning translation which adds to its success.

The only instances where I felt a mixture of discomfort and disappointment were in direct relation to Diop's presentation of women throughout. The woman only exist in the context of the men they interact with (Mademoiselle François is tied to her father, the doctor; and Fary Thiam is Alfa's first) and do not provide any other purpose than sexual gratification. The ways in which these women are described is uncomfortable and largely based on presumed subtext (specifically the notion that women "speak without speaking" and/or "speak with their eyes" when they never actually *say* anything.) Additionally, the trenches are frequently described as "vaginal" and that they "birth the soldiers" and other such descriptive terms. In those instances, I immediately felt pulled from the story. The presentation and representation of women in AT NIGHT ALL BLOOD IS BLACK is disappointing and, as I understand it, derogatory.

All in all, the story is layered and nuanced and carries a definite sense of haunting and fervour. Diop and Moschovakis present a view of trench warfare that is startlingly personal and emotional and bring a new and different darkness to the battlefield.

I loved this book. Alfa is a Senegalese "Chocolate" soldier with the French army, crawling through the trenches in WW1. When his friend, dying in the mud, begs Alfa to kill him in an act of mercy which Alfa refuses, it sends Alfa into a spiral of madness , courage, and vengeance. This was an immaculate translation from the original French; it almost read like poetry at parts. Alfa's descent into madness is paralleled only by the reader's need to utterly abandon themselves into the story. This is, frankly, a masterpiece of myth making.

Reviewed as a result of Netgalley offer. The title is intriguing and the cover art really drew me in. The subject matter was too much for me to handle. It’s war. It’s bloody, gritty, rotten, disgusting, smelly, vicious war. It’s what happens to a man who sees his best friend die and how he reacts—his naked, raw, violent emotion.
I don’t know enough history to know whether this was an actual war or one which was written to show how awful facing battle is. There were some clues about some various cultures on both sides but I do not believe that it mattered in the end.
War is bad. I get it.

"At Night All Blood is Black" by David Diop

✋🏾✋🏾

Alfa Ndiaye is a 'Chocolat', a Senegalese fighting World War I alongside French troops in return for French citizenship.He is joined by his childhood friend & 'more-than-brother', Mademba Diop, who ends up being brutally injured during the war. Alfa is requested by the dying Madema to kill and release him from the pain of a slow death. However, out of his love for Mademba, but more importantly out of his need to NOT feel guilty by killing his friend, Alfa denies Mademba's requests. This guilt in letting his best friend die a painful death makes home in Alfa's heart & turns him into a dark, violent, remorseless man who loses his mind and spirals down a hole of coldness & mental illness. He takes revenge for Diop's murder by killing the enemy in a way that wouldn't be sanctioned under war conventions. Alfa's aim is no longer to 'kill enemies' but only to catch one, just one, and kill him slowly, just like Mademba, then to mutilate him, cut out one of his hands and take it back to his troop's trench like a loot of war. This doesn't go down well with some in his troop. Alfa is then made to take rest in a hospital and told to join back in combat, once he (or his memories) have healed. Here we get a deeper look into Alfa's childhood, his relationship with his mother &Mademba.

✋🏾✋🏾✋🏾

Diop, the writer, & Anna Moschovakis, the translator, have done magic with this book.it is about 160 pages long but packs a strong punch to your gut. There are some very gross descriptions of Alfa mutilating the enemy & chopping of their hands, eight hands of Eight he killed, which he then takes back to his team. Still, the grossness is outweighed by how captivating it all is. Story within story format has been attempted well. There are some oft repeated words like a refrain, which makes the book somewhat poetic- like the use of "God's truth" or "I know, I understand". I also like the idea that it delineates knowing and understanding into two separate acts. Translated into Hindi, it is music. ""मुझे पता है, मैं समझता हूं"

Very Good (Aug 2020)

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*Many thanks to David Diop, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
An original novel, rather shor, in which the Author depicts the horros of WW1 through the eyes of the Senegalese soldier, who unable to do a mercy killing for his more-than-brother is enveloped gradually into madness.
The book was not an easy read for me but I appreciate the effort on the side of the author to fill in the gap regarding the participation of soldiers from French colonies in the WW1 of which I was unaware.
Very dark and upsetting, still worth the read.

This intense, original novel puts the reader face-first with the brutality and devastation of war from the perspective of Alfa Ndiaye, a Senegalese man fighting for the French in WWI. The tale begins with Alfa unable to commit the mercy-killing of his friend Mademba Diop. This event ultimately breaks Alfa, pulling him into the darkest recesses of his mind.

While this novel is bleak and disturbing, it is also imaginative and bewitching. The gradual unraveling of the main character’s psyche stemming from the death of his best friend is told in a brutal and gripping manner. It is a dark tale that enthralls the reader from beginning to end. While I found this novel fascinating, its graphic violence and unflinching portrait of a broken man would make it a difficult read for those easily disturbed.

This is certainly one of the best novels I have read in 2020 and I look forward to more of David Diop’s writing in the future.

This is a slim novel, but the author manages to fit a large story in the pages. Alfa is on a WW1 battlefield consoling his best friend who is from the same village in Senegalese. Mademba is pleading for Alfa to kill him, he knows he’s dying having suffering a fatal would in battle. Alfa does not want to and ends up waiting with his friend until his friend eventually passes. This incident likely led to Alfa taking on the German enemy single-handed, though not in broad daylight, always at night and always one at a time and always taking a memento from his victim. The story is told in the first person, Alfa recalls his village life and what led him and his friend to volunteer to fight for the French army. Violence, sometimes graphic, happens, mostly on the battlefield, if you are squeamish about that you may want to give this a pass. The story captured my attention and I whizzed through it in no time. I highly recommend. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

WWI. The impact of the war on a young Senegalese soldier who's best friend and more than brother dies of horrific injuries.
This is a very original way of depicting the horror of the trenches and that the insanity of war is okay on the battlefield but is not wanted when a soldier returns to the trench after yet another failed attack.
There's a well told back story on why the two men were friends and a scary disintegration of the mental state of the narrator.
Original. Bleak. Realistic.

‘At Night All Blood Is Black’ is a dark, unsettling, poetically-written story set largely in the trenches on the Western Front during World War I. The story is told in the perspective of Alfa Ndiaye, a young so-called “Chocolat” Senegalese man, who finds himself fighting for the French against Germany during the war. The story follows Alfa’s deteriorating state of mind due to guilt and grief from his more-than-brother, Mademba Diop, dying on the front. Alfa feels responsible for his fatal injuries and for not immediately ending his life when he begged him to. Alfa takes revenge against the German soldiers for his friend’s death and soon alienates the French soldiers he is fighting with by his actions. Alfa’s distinct sense of otherness and loneliness becomes more apparent as the French soldiers see him as separate and strange; and eventually as someone who should be feared as a result of his violent actions against German soldiers. Some of the descriptions of war and his actions are extremely upsetting as they are incredibly violent and gruesome. We learn more about Alfa’s life and bond with Mademba Diop in stream of consciousness writing. Overall, a quick, fascinating story about the terror and ramifications of World War I.

Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing this ARC.