Jenn Writes

David Diop has won the prestigious International Booker Prize for translated fiction with his novel At Night All Blood Is Black about a Senegalese soldier fighting for France in World War I.

The Paris-born writer is the first French winner of the prize, given for a book translated into English, and shares the award with translator Anna Moschovakis.

The story, described as searing and devastating, follows Alfa Ndiaye’s plunge into extreme violence and madness following the death in the trenches of his childhood friend, Mademba Diop.

Although it is a story about the senseless horror of war, it also tells of love – of the deep bonds formed by young men facing death together.

Chair of the award panel, historian Lucy Hughes-Hallett, described the novel as  “an extraordinary piece of narrative, very powerful, very compelling.”

Poetic form

She added: “This book does what the best poetry does, entering the reader’s consciousness at a level that bypasses rationality and transcends the subject matter.”

Although born in France, Diop was brought up in Senegal.

At Night All Blood Is Black was inspired Diop’s Senegalese great-grandfather’s silence over his war experiences. “He never said anything to his wife, or to my mother, about his experience. That is why I was always very interested by all the tales and accounts which gave one access to a form of intimacy with that particular war,” Diop told the BBC.

The Senegalese tirailleurs, infantry from sub-Saharan countries colonised by France, were formed in 1857 and fought for France in several wars. Some 135 000 tirailleurs fought in Europe, in World War I, with 30 000 being killed.

Speaking about the award, Diop told AFP, “This really shows that literature has no borders.”

At Night All Blood Is Black was first published in 2018 as Frere d’ame (soul brother), a play on the words Frere d’armes (brothers in arms).