Review of "At Night All Blood is Black" by David Diop

 The book that won the international bookers prize 2021 (spoilers ahead)

It was indeed a privilege to have read this book. It is about the horrors of war, its dehumanising effect, the use of racial stereotypes by the dominant race to further it's cause (in this case by instilling the fear of the savage barbarian in the heart of the European enemy), the unraveling of the mind when one has seen the death of a near one. In this book, the protagonist descends into madness as he fails to mercy kill his soul brother (his "more than brother") when he begs him after being badly wounded. So agonised is our protagonist that he starts killing the blue-eyed enemy in crazy act of rare daring and collects their hand as trophies. Initially admired for his reckless courage, the fellow soldiers begin to avoid him as they see his bravery as sorcery or something thing that would bring them a certain death leading the captain to give him a month's break. During this time we see him descend further in to insanity as flashbacks reveal his parental history of loss, his relationship with his soul brother and the night of love he spent just before he left for the war. The last chapter are the most troublesome as they become almost incoherent and appear untethered reflecting his own crazed synthesis of reality. Brilliantly he parallels his story with that of a sorcerer-prince and ugly saviour warrior. 

I found the novel to be scintillatingly brilliant with almost all lines so pregnant with meaning and the brutality metaphorised with the tenderest objects. His Senegalese heritage takes a lilting rhythm of its own which would have been lost twice(once from Wolof/Fula to french and then to English) but for the skillful craft of the translator. Words and phrases are often repeated almost like a song and I found the most moving sections in the description of his mother and father( "he was immobile as a baobab tree, she was the daughter of wind"). The constant comparison to war trenches as woman's sexual organs foreshadows the sexual violence with madamoiselle francoise in contrast to the sweet lovemaking by the river under the ebony trees of the pre-war time. The author constantly also talks about the futility of the ability to reach the true meaning as he constantly reminds us how "each thing is double" something he enunciates later when he says "to translate is to risk understanding better than other that the truth about a word is not single, but double, even quadruple, or quintuple. To translate is to distance oneself from God's truth, which, as everyone knows or believes, is single", making it a classic study of many truths and meanings that would be given as the author dies and the reader is born. 

The last chapters are the most difficult to understand, much less explain but can be better understood if seen in the light of the original french title, "Frère d'âme" or the soul brother as he sees himself as his soul brother Diop, the one he couldn't kill. 

The book is written in stream of consciousness style and the final crescendo in to madness is as much reflected in words as in style in which they are written. 

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