Historical Fiction — The Book Roads

At Night All Blood is Black

David Diop

During the First World War, Alfa Ndiaye, a young Senegalese soldier fighting for the French army, watches his childhood friend and fellow soldier, Mademba, suffer a horrific battlefield injury. Mademba repeatedly begs Alfa to end his suffering, but Alfa cannot bring himself to deliver the fatal blow. Haunted by guilt and the memory of his friend’s agony, Alfa begins a terrifying transformation. Night after night, he ventures into enemy territory, killing German soldiers in increasingly brutal ways and returning to camp with their severed hands. His fellow soldiers grow frightened of him, whispering that he has become something beyond human. As Alfa’s violence intensifies, the boundaries between courage and madness, revenge and remorse, begin to dissolve. Through his increasingly fragmented narration, Diop exposes the psychological devastation of war and the dehumanising legacy of colonialism. Drawing on Senegal’s history of supplying soldiers to the French army, this haunting novel challenges conventional narratives of heroism and examines the terrible cost of turning human beings into instruments of violence. It won the 2021 International Booker Prize, shared by Diop and translator Anna Moschovakis.

Senegal 2020