num_pages: 145
description: 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 Mans Land. Unable to commit this mercy killing madness creeps into Alfas 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 Germans severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfas deeds with admiration but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isnt 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 mans descent into madness.Selected by students across France to win the Prix Goncourt des Lycens David Diops 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.
language: English
title: At Night All Blood is Black
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux