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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i was just constantly distracted by how repetitive it is. i know it’s a style choice, but i can only hear the same things rehashed over and over so many times. the use of the same phrases “god’s truth” “i swear to you” and “i know, i understand” over and over and over was particularly grating
challenging
dark
fast-paced
dark
sad
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
Dark, bleak, extremely intense. Rhythmic and interesting, but at times almost unbearably repetitive.
adventurous
challenging
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Violence, War
Minor: Racism, Torture, Kidnapping
dark
sad
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Incredibly short. Unbelievably repetitive.
I picked this book up after finishing "Shuggie Bain," by Douglas Stuart. That novel is a little long and very sad--a semi-autobiographical account of a boy, caring for his alcoholic mother and being bullied by his peers. "At Night All Blood is Black" is much shorter (only 145 pages), but no less challenging. Alfa Ndiaye, a 20-year-old Senegalese man, fighting for the French during WWI, continually recounts the traumatic death of his friend, Mademba Diop, on the battlefield and his own madness that ensues. The novel is dark, filled with both the horror of modern war and folkloric myth--it makes for a surreal, satisfying, but somewhat opaque, combination.
Diop probably does and says a lot more in this novel than I was able to pick up on. There are familiar elements to the story--an unreliable narrator, the accepted racism of colonialism, the meaninglessness of war (“So they love to sprint onto the battlefield to be beautifully massacred while screaming like madmen, regulation rifle in the left hand and savage machete in the right.” 14-15). But there are also other, less familiar strains--soul-devouring demms, the European cultural influence (e.g., futurism) on Africans, allegorical folklore. Jessi Jezewska Stevens, in her review, "In the Trenches with the Colonizer," seems to get at a lot of these while also elucidating the book's confusing last few chapters.
Looming under the entire novel are feelings of darkness, regret, and a slide into madness. Diop seems to connect those feelings to the compromising nature of translation--“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.” 138. Madness, with its skewed perspective, seems similar to translation, with its imperfections.
Diop probably does and says a lot more in this novel than I was able to pick up on. There are familiar elements to the story--an unreliable narrator, the accepted racism of colonialism, the meaninglessness of war (“So they love to sprint onto the battlefield to be beautifully massacred while screaming like madmen, regulation rifle in the left hand and savage machete in the right.” 14-15). But there are also other, less familiar strains--soul-devouring demms, the European cultural influence (e.g., futurism) on Africans, allegorical folklore. Jessi Jezewska Stevens, in her review, "In the Trenches with the Colonizer," seems to get at a lot of these while also elucidating the book's confusing last few chapters.
Looming under the entire novel are feelings of darkness, regret, and a slide into madness. Diop seems to connect those feelings to the compromising nature of translation--“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.” 138. Madness, with its skewed perspective, seems similar to translation, with its imperfections.