At Night All Blood Is Black: A Novel
- ISBN-10
- 0374720479
- ISBN-13
- 9780374720476
- Category
- Fiction
- Pages
- 160
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2020-11-10
- Publisher
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Author
- David Diop
Description
*WINNER OF THE 2021 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE* *ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021* Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction Shortlisted for the 2022 DUBLIN Literary Award "Astonishingly good." —Lily Meyer, NPR "So incantatory and visceral I don’t think I’ll ever forget it." —Ali Smith, The Guardian | Best Books of 2020 One of The Wall Street Journal's 11 best books of the fall | One of The A.V. Club's fifteen best books of 2020 |A Sunday Times best book of the year Selected by students across France to win the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, David Diop’s English-language, historical fiction debut At Night All Blood is Black is a “powerful, hypnotic, and dark novel” (Livres Hebdo) of terror and transformation in the trenches of the First World War. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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? Peppered with bullets and black magic, this remarkable novel fills in a forgotten chapter in the history of World War I. Blending oral storytelling traditions with the gritty, day-to-day, journalistic horror of life in the trenches, David Diop's At Night All Blood is Black is a dazzling tale of a man’s descent into madness.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Dead Until Dark
By Charlaine Harris"New York Times"-bestselling author Harris has delighted fans with her mystery series featuring small-town waitress-turned-paranormal sleuth Sookie Stackhouse. "Dead Until Dark" is her first novel in the series.
-
Blood Dark
By Louis Guilloux... ELIZABETH HARDwick Seduction and Betrayal' ELIZABETH HARDwick Sleepless Nights' L.P. HARTLEY Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy' L.P. HARTLEY The Go-Between” NATHANIEL HAwTHoRNE Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny by Papa ALFRED HAYES.
-
The Book of Night Women
By Marlon JamesFrom the author of the National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf and the WINNER of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings "An undeniable success.” — The New York Times Book Review A true triumph of ...
-
Blood of Victory: A Novel
By Alan FurstPraise for Blood of Victory “Densely atmospheric and genuinely romantic, the novel is most reminiscent of the Hollywood films of the forties, when moral choices were rendered not in black-and-white but in smoky shades of gray.”—The ...
-
Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America
By Patrick PhillipsNational Book Award finalist Patrick Phillips tells Forsyth’s tragic story in vivid detail and traces its long history of racial violence all the way back to antebellum Georgia.
-
Book of Night
By Holly Black#1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black makes her stunning adult debut with Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of shadowy thieves and secret societies in the vein of Ninth House and The Night Circus.
-
Black Leopard, Red Wolf
By Marlon James" --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times The epic novel, an African Game of Thrones, from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, ...
-
Of Blood and Bone: Chronicles of The One
By Nora RobertsNora Roberts, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the epic Year One returns with Of Blood and Bone, a new tale of terror and magick in a brand new world.
-
From Blood and Ash
By Jennifer L. ArmentroutI shot forward to one side of the doors just as Luddie and Bryant snapped out of their shock. Grasping one side along with Luddie, we swung it closed a second before Bryant and Phillips closed their side. “Bar it!
-
Hammer Blows
By David Mandessi DiopIn this English translation of Hammer Blows, the famous collection of poems by renowned writer David Diop is presented in all its brilliance and wit.