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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I didn't really enjoy the way women were written about in this book.
clearly this book is more memorable than I initially thought because I've been thinking more and more about this book and I realize that it is a very unique story and way of storytelling . Its a book I'll definitely come back to.
How can such a short book seem so interminably long? The repetitive writing style of this book was completely off-putting for me. I just couldn’t get past the monotonous repetition of phrases like: my more-than-brother; I know, I understand; God’s truth; belly of the earth; devourer of souls, etc.
Not only did the author overuse these, and countless other phrases, but he would recount an event or detail and then repeat it again and again. It was tedious, tiresome and boring. I have no idea why this book won a prestigious literary award. Even skimming this short book was too long to endure. I had to force myself to finish it.
Not only did the author overuse these, and countless other phrases, but he would recount an event or detail and then repeat it again and again. It was tedious, tiresome and boring. I have no idea why this book won a prestigious literary award. Even skimming this short book was too long to endure. I had to force myself to finish it.
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Somewhere in No Man's Land, amidst coils of barbed wire, corpses and trenches, Mademba Diop is dying in the arms of his more-than-brother Alfa Ndiaye. He pleads with him to kill him while trying to stop his guts from falling. Mademba begged three times. Three times Alfa rejected his more-than-brother. Returning to his trench, with his friend's corpse in his arms, Alfa begins his descent into madness. Overwhelmed by remorse for sending his friend to his death by teasing him before the attack, because of the cowardice of not giving his mercy when he asked for it, Alfa goes every night to the enemy trenches on a revenge mission, to look for the blue-eyed killer of his friend. With the first three severed hands he brought as trophies to his ranks, he became a hero amongst his comrades. After the fourth, he experienced only fear from his white and "Chocolate" comrades. The whisper spread like wildfire. Alfa has become a dëmm, a devourer of souls.
David Diop's novel "At Night All Blood is Black" brings, one might say, a forgotten perspective of the World War I, that of African soldiers who fought in the ranks of the French army in a war that was never theirs. For the country that enslaved them, for the people who saw them as savages who they would let loose on the enemy with machetes in their hands. To a nation that wasn't their own. For a language they didn't understand. The sound of the whistle that marks the beginning of the charge, when they come out from the earth that looks like a woman, is the only thing they understand, whether they know the language or not. Disobeying it means death. To obey it means they may survive the rain of enemy bullets and shells that are pelted at them as they rush across No Man's Land.
Instead of devoting himself to delve deeper into the story, telling everything that has been hushed up for years, Diop decides on a stripped-down version of the descent into madness of a guilt ridden, blood frenzied soldier. Not at all an original story, the only thing that makes it stand out is that it deals with the war from the perspective of an African soldier. Diop's prose is simple, repetitive to the extent that he repeats the sentence three times in the course of one paragraph in the same or slightly different form. Although this is supposed to contribute to the portrayal of Alfa's psychological stumbling, it only wears the reader. Perhaps in the original his wordplay and the rhythm of the language have a greater value that was lost in the translation, but this way, somewhere along the way, what Diop wanted to show is lost.
In the second half of the novel, the one when Alfa ends up in a hospital behind the trenches on a break from war and killing, where instead of recovering, he sinks deeper, Diop further complicates things. Especially near the end where he decides to explain to the reader what the writer wanted to say, which is something no writer should do in such a banal way. If the novel was edited in the right way, it would probably be no more than a novella of barely a hundred pages.
It's a pity that Diop decided to tell such a rich topic and interesting idea in this way, because this should have been a better novel, especially since it was inspired by his grandfather's experiences in the World War I. It could have been a new "All Quiet on Western Front", this is just an average read in which Diop's talent is glimpsed, although it is worth reading.
David Diop's novel "At Night All Blood is Black" brings, one might say, a forgotten perspective of the World War I, that of African soldiers who fought in the ranks of the French army in a war that was never theirs. For the country that enslaved them, for the people who saw them as savages who they would let loose on the enemy with machetes in their hands. To a nation that wasn't their own. For a language they didn't understand. The sound of the whistle that marks the beginning of the charge, when they come out from the earth that looks like a woman, is the only thing they understand, whether they know the language or not. Disobeying it means death. To obey it means they may survive the rain of enemy bullets and shells that are pelted at them as they rush across No Man's Land.
Instead of devoting himself to delve deeper into the story, telling everything that has been hushed up for years, Diop decides on a stripped-down version of the descent into madness of a guilt ridden, blood frenzied soldier. Not at all an original story, the only thing that makes it stand out is that it deals with the war from the perspective of an African soldier. Diop's prose is simple, repetitive to the extent that he repeats the sentence three times in the course of one paragraph in the same or slightly different form. Although this is supposed to contribute to the portrayal of Alfa's psychological stumbling, it only wears the reader. Perhaps in the original his wordplay and the rhythm of the language have a greater value that was lost in the translation, but this way, somewhere along the way, what Diop wanted to show is lost.
In the second half of the novel, the one when Alfa ends up in a hospital behind the trenches on a break from war and killing, where instead of recovering, he sinks deeper, Diop further complicates things. Especially near the end where he decides to explain to the reader what the writer wanted to say, which is something no writer should do in such a banal way. If the novel was edited in the right way, it would probably be no more than a novella of barely a hundred pages.
It's a pity that Diop decided to tell such a rich topic and interesting idea in this way, because this should have been a better novel, especially since it was inspired by his grandfather's experiences in the World War I. It could have been a new "All Quiet on Western Front", this is just an average read in which Diop's talent is glimpsed, although it is worth reading.
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
It's a literary work, not a novel. Something I'd like to analyse in order to appreciate all the different layers
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Violence, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , War