In refusing to honor his friend’s last wish, Ndiyae’s guilt compels him to make amends, his bloody methods first gaining pride from his French captain and trenchmates, but later giving way to fear when they believe he’s become unhinged.
Plans are hatched to get Alfa away from the front, and to separate him from his growing collection of hands, but how does one reason with a demon, and how far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend?”ĭavid Diop’s At Night All Blood is Black chronicles the psychological spiraling of Alfa Ndiyae, a Senegalese soldier recruited to fight alongside the French army in World War I, after he is unable to perform a mercy killing to end the suffering of his childhood friend and fellow soldier.
At first his comrades look at Alfa’s deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn’t a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German’s severed hand. Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land.
Quick Book Summary (from the official blurb): “Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called “Chocolat” soldier with the French army during World War I. David Diop’s At Night All Blood is Black, winner of the 2021 International Booker Prize, is our next selection. In a continuation of our series of micro-reviews, assistant editor Brandon Williams brought together a group of ardent readers to give their quick-hit impressions of recent novels which have won major awards from the literary world.
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