Blog Post Two
At Night …
I just read the 2021 Booker prize winning book “At Night all Blood is Black” by David Diop (translated from the original French by Anna Moschovakis)…
…and found it an interesting and thought provoking read.
“At night all Blood is Black” is only 110 pages, but very dark and disturbing, with graphic descriptions of gruesome, violence. Understandable, because the novella is set during the first World War, when colonial France, confronted by the German offensive, inducted Senegalese (and other Africans from their colonies) as frontline soldiers to take advantage of the then prevalent notion of Africans as savages and sorcerers. This historical fact provides the backdrop for David Diop to narrate the experiences and musings of Alfa Ndiaye, a Senegalese peasant who is on the battlefront.
The story is set in motion by Alfa’s sense of loss, guilt, regrets and shame after the death of his more-than-brother Mademba Diop, who was bayoneted and left eviscerated with his guts in the air, begging Alfa to slit his throat and spare him from the suffering.
Phillipe Sands, British author, described the book as “a poetic work, poetically translated and a brutal work, brutally translated.” I think that’s a very apt description, because the savagery and meaninglessness of war is powerfully portrayed. And it hits you hard.
That being so, I gradually discovered that beneath the veneer of savage violence, there is intense psychological churning that tosses up thought provoking questions for the reader to ponder over. If you are comfortable with works of art that raise questions without providing answers, compel thinking long after you are done with it, you will love this book.
It is definitely a different kind of book.
I can go on and on, but so as to not spoil the experience for you, I will end here with a quote from the book that will give you a flavour and illustrate the depth and profundity that rests alongside, and sometimes beneath, the veneer of violence.
But before that, a few points that I found to be noteworthy.
It is a first person account by Alfa Ndiaye, and therefore, his subjective version of the events.
The story abruptly unfolds for the reader (mark the ellipsis) indicating that we are not beginning at the very beginning.
Alfa’s account moves forward and backward, often rambling and repetitive, to reflect the guilt-ridden moral pangs and torment that he is suffering.
The original French title Frère d'âme translates to soul brother. This focuses attention on Alfa’s soul brother Mademba Diop. The English title “At night all blood is black” focuses attention on the gruesome savagery in the first part of the book.
And finally the quote from “At Night All Blood is Black”:
“Any event that surprises a man has already been experienced by other men before him. The effects of all human possibilities have already been felt. Nothing that might happen to us here, as terrible or as felicitous as it might seem, is new. But what we experience is always new because every man is unique, the way every leaf and every tree is unique. Men share with each other the same lifeblood, but each feeds himself from it differently.”