Reviews - At Night All Blood is Black

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3.3k reviews for:

At Night All Blood is Black

David Diop

3.82 AVERAGE

drushtii's review against another edition

3.0

I made the mistake of reading this as a audiobook. It was difficult to understand what the narrator was saying at times. This was a nice read. I wish i connected to it more tho.

alostarre's review against another edition

4.0

dark 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

beeb2001's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

mia_stewart's review

4.0

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

lady_moon's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I always tend to prefer books written in third person because I feel first person is harder to be done right and most writers are kinda clumsy with it. But here, the first person narration was immaculate.

drdreuh's review

3.75

dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Ooph - brutal. Visceral. One of those good books that are also somehow not enjoyable to read. "Good" in its uniqueness. "Good" in its Africanness - themes common across a lot of literature written by African authors - witchcraft, animism, breaking free from ancestoral traditions, colonization, savagery, white, black. "Good" in its specificity - to Senegal and Senegalese folklore, to WWI, to Senegalese fighting alongside their colonizers in the trenches.
At Night All Blood is Black is all (mostly) blood, guts, feces, rot - all that is inside turned out. The first third is hard to get through, and its a good thing its a short book, or I may not have pushed through.
Diop uses funny phrases throughout - and repetitively - which makes me want to read him in the original, and liberally sprinkles little cultural gems, which intrigue me down rabbit hole after rabbit hole.
A rough but not terrible entree to Senegalese literature.

Lines I Loved:
What I think is the people don't want me to think.
Humans are always finding absurd explanations for things.
Smiles inspire smiles, just like yawns.
Until a man is dead, he is not yet done being created.
Any event that surprises a man has already been experienced by other men before him. ... Even if the new isnt really new, its always new for those who, ceaselessly, wash up on the worlds shores, generation after generation, wave after wave.
I am the tree and the seed that grew into it.

nastian's review against another edition

2.0

Just couldn't vibe with the writing style. I only liked the bit about Alfa's life in the village before the war, but sadly that was just a tiny bit of the book.