At Night All Blood Is Black, David Diop, 2018
“That’s war: it’s when God lags behind the music of men, when he can’t untangle the threads of so many fates at the same time. God’s truth, you can’t blame God.”
Alfa Ndiaye is a Tirailleur Sénégalais, one of the around 135,000 West Africans recruited by the French army and sent to fight in Europe during the First World War. Casualties were very high among these soldiers, some 30,000 of whom were killed in brutal conditions. One such death, of Ndiaye’s friend Mandemba Diop, starts Ndiaye on a descent into bloody madness. At first, his savagery is embraced by and made to serve French military purposes. Soon, though, he becomes a monster to his own side as much as to the enemy.
Diop writes vividly and hauntingly, and his powerful prose is an unsentimental testament to the brutality of war and the savagery with which we are too often capable of treating not just our enemies, but those we claim to be fighting for.
Smirk factor: All clear: 2 pts (No smirking; full of beautiful and terrifying prose)
Immersion factor: Chest-high: 1.5 pts
Writing quality: High: 2 pts
Character/plot development: High: 2 pts
Innovative/interesting: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Total: 9/10 (4.5 stars, rounded to 5)