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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
dark
tense
medium-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
challenging
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A tale of african soldier in WWI riddled with survivor guilt, ptsd, and rampaging vengeance. Viscerally written
challenging
dark
mysterious
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:
Complicated
At Night All Blood is Black is a descent into madness triggered by loss. Our main character Alfa watches his best friend die in the first scene, and his grief slowly turns him into a monster. Maybe even literally.
This is the sort of story that leaves many doors open. We are very much in Alfa's head, and he is by no means a reliable narrator. A reading of this is much benefitted by a long discussion about it afterwards. And yet, the abundance of nuance and meaning does not come at the cost of plot or succinctness. In fact, this novel is impressively concise and effective. I think my favorite part was the exploration of the contradictory nature of war and its demands.
At Night All Blood is Black may be an eye-catching title, and it does appear as a sentence in the text, but it is not nearly as fitting as the original French title, Soul Brothers. As much as this book's beauty blew me away, after reading more about it by reviewers who read the original, I am sad to have missed some fantastic prose. The text even poignantly points this out:
Overall, I definitely recommend this to anyone ready to delve into some extremely dark subject matter. You will be rewarded tenfold.
This is the sort of story that leaves many doors open. We are very much in Alfa's head, and he is by no means a reliable narrator. A reading of this is much benefitted by a long discussion about it afterwards. And yet, the abundance of nuance and meaning does not come at the cost of plot or succinctness. In fact, this novel is impressively concise and effective. I think my favorite part was the exploration of the contradictory nature of war and its demands.
At Night All Blood is Black may be an eye-catching title, and it does appear as a sentence in the text, but it is not nearly as fitting as the original French title, Soul Brothers. As much as this book's beauty blew me away, after reading more about it by reviewers who read the original, I am sad to have missed some fantastic prose. The text even poignantly points this out:
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. To translate is to risk understanding better than others that the truth about a word is not single, but double, even triple, quadruple, or quintuple. To translate is to distance oneself from God’s truth, which, as everyone knows or believes, is single.
Overall, I definitely recommend this to anyone ready to delve into some extremely dark subject matter. You will be rewarded tenfold.
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Rape, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Abandonment, Colonisation, War
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Meh.
This story is one of loss for sure, but I think more than anything it's of a soldier slowly losing his mind after the death of his friend when he failed to live up to what he felt he should have done for his friend. I think I understand what happened at the end of this novella, but it got a little lost in the shuffle with the constant flashbacks going on towards the midpoint of the story.
I will say, since this was my first time reading a novel from a Senegalese writer, some of the terminology and phrases he used during the story were strange to me and it took a bit to get used to the flow of the story and how he wrote it.
Not a bad novella or anything, but certainly more physiological horror than physical horror and a bit different than that I thought I was getting into.
This story is one of loss for sure, but I think more than anything it's of a soldier slowly losing his mind after the death of his friend when he failed to live up to what he felt he should have done for his friend. I think I understand what happened at the end of this novella, but it got a little lost in the shuffle with the constant flashbacks going on towards the midpoint of the story.
I will say, since this was my first time reading a novel from a Senegalese writer, some of the terminology and phrases he used during the story were strange to me and it took a bit to get used to the flow of the story and how he wrote it.
Not a bad novella or anything, but certainly more physiological horror than physical horror and a bit different than that I thought I was getting into.
i liked this but i need to reread, especially to better understand the ending. I am just gravitating towards a lot of grief-stricken rage in art of all mediums and this is not the exception