Reviews with content warning for Racism - At Night All Blood is Black

A poetic and haunting story following a young Senegalese man in WWI fighting for the French against the Germans, and his slow decent into madness after he refuses to give his badly wounded friend a mercy kill in No Man's Land. Powerful themes of humanity, what makes us humans, when are we considered humans by others and when are we not. Stunning ending, in both senses of the word.

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js1512's review

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

wellfedpages's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

‘This story, like all interesting stories, is full of clever innuendo. Whoever tells a well-known story like the one about the lion-sorcerer and the fickle princess might always be hiding another story beneath it. To be seen, the story hidden beneath the well-known story has to peek out a little bit. If the hidden story hides too well beneath the well known story, it stays invisible…When it’s understood by those for whom it is intended, the story hidden beneath the well known story can change the course of their lives, can push them to transform a diffuse desire into a concrete act

Of stories

And meaning

And secrets

Hidden in plain sight

Aren’t those the best deceptions?

The best works of art

The best stories

The face beneath the face

The eyes beneath the eyes

The words beneath the words

Diop is commenting about the nature of story-telling

We all draw from

life

memory

research

our pasts

from things better left unsaid

But writers cloak them in words

So that there is a story on the surface most see

A deeper commentary that many glean between the lines

And then there’s a tale that only few know was told

A story for all

Yet a story for one

Through this blood & gore soaked saga of a soldier unravelling & sinking into the method of madness, Diop untangles the many fissures of war

How it destroy’s people’s sanity

How racism classism & xenophobia are deeply entrenched even in the trenches

& shape events

How there are no winners in a war

Everybody loses some part of themselves

How victory is just an empty shell

crunched on the battlefield

beneath the heavy boots of time

But this is also one man’s story

How he loses his mind

His humanity

Himself

But was it just war that pushed him to those depths of depravity?

Or had loss eaten away his soul long before?

Was war just the last straw?

Was his incapability to be temporarily mad like the others who threw themselves in the line of fire & clear commitment to hunt more apt?

Was his violence towards women a product of war?

Or was it rooted much deeper in how he viewed women & himself?

Was he the lion?

The hunter?

Or just a phantom of the man with the pen

‘The hidden story has to be there without being there, it has to let itself be guessed at, the way a tight saffron-yellow dress lets the beautiful figure of a young girl be guessed at. It has to be transparent.’

The blatant objectification of women in this part that I left out from the initial quote & many such passages say something not just about Alfa or Madema, but Diop

How he views women - objects that are either consumed or plundered

How men write women - the fickle princess or the mute mademoiselle

And how it severs them from becoming truly human

Much like the severed trophies that the protagonist collects

Or was that another hidden message Diop had tucked in all along?

Translated wonderfully from the French by Anna Moschovakis

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abbie_'s review

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dark reflective sad medium-paced

Devoured this book in about an hour and a half, it had me hypnotised with its repetitive rhythm so that I couldn’t stop reading even when the violence and bloodshed reached its peak. A short but powerful depiction of war, madness, the violence of colonialism, and brotherhood, At Night All Blood is Black delves deep into the psyche of a man driven to madness by the atrocities he witnesses on the battlefield.

After seeing his best friend (his closer-than-brother) Mademba die with his guts hanging out, feeling partially responsible for goading him into a senseless charge across no-man’s-land, our narrator Alfa begins to spiral. He refuses to end his friend’s life quickly, believing he has already done enough to hurt him, and this sparks a need for vengeance. Alfa begins a bloody campaign, killing enemy soldiers in the same way Mademba died, cutting off their hands as keepsakes, reminders.

This book is quite terrifying, demonstrating the effects the futile violence of war have on a man’s sanity. This is exacerbated by the racist tactics employed; Senegalese soldiers like Alfa and Mademba were ordered to play into the ‘savage’ stereotype, armed with machetes with the aim of striking fear into the heart of the German soldiers.

The translation by Anna Moschovakis is brilliantly executed, holding onto the rhythms and repetition so we can witness Alfa’s descent into madness through his language. He clings to phrases and repeated speech patterns the same way he clings to his last vestiges of sanity. The ending is truly haunting.

Admittedly I didn’t get around to reading many of the International Booker longlisted books this year, but I can still confidently say this was a deserving winner!

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ida137's review against another edition

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minimarshmallowsonricekrispies's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Really fast paced read, the best ww1 book I have read interesting, emotional and insightful on level that is not represented enough when it comes to war literature , lovely writing style would definitely recommend!

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jesshadlow's review

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

jouljet's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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