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Plot Summary of At Night All Blood
At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop tells the tragic story of Alfa Ndiaye, a young Senegalese soldier fighting for the French army during World War I. The novel begins with the agonising death of his childhood friend and “more-than-brother,” Mademba Diop. During a trench assault, a blue-eyed enemy soldier mortally wounds Mademba, slicing his stomach open. As he lays dying, Mademba begs Alfa three times to slit his throat and end his suffering. Bound by duty and the laws of his ancestors, Alfa refuses. His refusal forces Mademba to die a slow, painful death.
Alfa is consumed by guilt for denying his friend mercy. Consequently, he undergoes a radical psychological break. He decides to stop listening to the “voice of duty” and begins to think for himself. Therefore, Alfa embraces the “savage” persona his French captain encourages the West African soldiers to play; he sneaks into no-man’s-land every night to hunt. He captures a blue-eyed enemy soldier, binds them, slices their bellies open, waits for them to silently beg for death, and then slits their throats. He gives them the humane death he denied Mademba. He then severs their right hands and brings them back to the trench as trophies.
Initially, Alfa’s trench-mates celebrate him as a hero and a lucky totem. However, as he returns with his fourth, fifth, and sixth severed hands, their admiration turns to intense fear. The soldiers, both white and black, begin to avoid him, believing he is a dëmm—a sorcerer or devourer of souls.
To preserve his grisly trophies, Alfa hides the hands in the cooking fire’s ashes, drying them out like mummified fish. His white friend, Jean-Baptiste, steals the first rotting hand and straps it to his helmet with the middle finger raised to mock the enemy. This provocation causes an enemy artilleryman to target and decapitate Jean-Baptiste. In retaliation, Alfa sneaks directly into the enemy trench that night and captures the soldier on guard, collecting his fourth hand.
After Alfa collects seven hands, Captain Armand decides his continuous, calculated madness breaks the unwritten rules of war. Following a brutal incident where the captain forces the soldiers to execute seven fleeing French deserters, Alfa is ordered to take a month’s leave at a psychiatric centre in the Rear. Alfa secretly packs his seven mummified hands in his trunk, and he locks it with a terrifying talisman to prevent anyone from finding his secret.
At the recovery centre, Doctor François encourages Alfa to draw as a way to wash the “filth of war” from his mind. These drawing sessions trigger flashbacks to Alfa’s life in the Senegalese village of Gandiol. He recalls the deep grief of losing his beautiful Fula mother, Penndo Ba, who was kidnapped by Moorish slavers when he was a child. He remembers how Mademba’s mother subsequently adopted him, solidifying their brotherly bond, and how Alfa trained the frail Mademba into a strong wrestler so he could pass the army recruitment tests. Alfa also reflects on his love for Fary Thiam, the village chief’s daughter. In defiance of her father’s hatred for Alfa’s family, Fary chose Alfa and made love to him in an ebony forest the night before he and Mademba left for the war.
The climax of the novel occurs when Alfa finally draws his seven severed hands, revealing his horrific deeds to the doctor. Soon after, Alfa enters the bedroom of the doctor’s daughter, Mademoiselle François, who had been admiring him, and forcefully sleeps with her. During this encounter, the narrative perspective violently and surrealistically shifts. A new consciousness awakens inside a massive, scarless “wrestler’s body.” The new narrator realises he is Mademba Diop. Recounting a folktale about a scarless lion-sorcerer, Mademba explains that Alfa, out of profound friendship and compassion, abandoned his own mind and offered his powerful body to Mademba’s spirit so his friend would not have to wander alone in the nameless void of death.
Background of At Night All Blood
At Night All Blood Is Black is the second novel written by author David Diop. Diop was born in Paris and raised in Senegal. He is a professor at the University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour, where his academic research focuses on eighteenth-century French literature and European representations of Africa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The book was originally published in France in 2018 under the French title Frère d’âme by Éditions du Seuil. It was translated into English by Anna Moschovakis and published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2020. The English translation received publishing assistance from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.
Thematically, Diop frames the narrative by dedicating the book to his family and including three specific epigraphs that foreshadow the novel’s deep explorations of brotherhood, psychological fracture, and duality. These quotes include:
- A line from Michel de Montaigne’s “Of Friendship”: “We embraced each other by our names.”
- A quote from Pascal Quignard’s Mourir de penser: “Who thinks, betrays.”
- A quote from Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure: “I am two simultaneous voices, one long, the other short.”
Setting of At Night All Blood
The setting of At Night All Blood Is Black is divided between the grim realities of the World War I frontlines and the vivid memories of the protagonist’s past in West Africa. Specifically, the novel takes place in three primary locations. The first location is the trenches and “No-Man’s-Land” in France. The main narrative unfolds on the WWI battlefield, moving between the muddy, rat-infested French trenches—which Alfa describes as the “belly of the earth”—and the deadly expanse of “no-man’s-land” separating the French from the blue-eyed enemy forces. This is where Alfa and his fellow Senegalese “Chocolat” soldiers face artillery fire, barbed wire, and gruelling combat under the command of their French captain.
The second location is a psychiatric recuperation centre in the Rear. After his commanders deem his behaviour too “savage,” Alfa is sent away from the battlefield for a month of mandatory leave. He arrives at a calm “sanctuary” in the Rear, where traumatised soldiers are treated by Doctor François and nurses dressed in white. In stark contrast to the filthy trenches, this centre features large rooms with tables for drawing and quiet corridors painted bright white.
The third location is Gandiol, Senegal (in flashbacks). Through Alfa’s reflections and the therapeutic drawings he makes for Doctor François, the setting frequently shifts back to his pre-war life in Gandiol, a rural village near the city of Saint-Louis in Senegal. These memories detail a traditional West African environment, featuring peasant farmlands where villagers grow crops like millet and peanuts, camps of nomadic Fula shepherds, a small ebony forest, and the banks of the Senegal River, watched over by the river goddess Mame Coumba Bang.
About the Author
David Diop (born February 24, 1966, in Paris, France) is a celebrated contemporary French-Senegalese author and academic. He was raised in Senegal before returning to France for his higher education. He earned his PhD from the Sorbonne University and currently serves as a professor of 18th-century literature at the University of Pau and the Adour Region.
Diop’s academic background informs his creative writing. His research centres on how Enlightenment thinkers and colonial-era texts represent Africa and Black identity. This allows him to critically examine the historical construction of the “other.”
His fiction challenges established historical canons by giving voice to those who were silenced or misunderstood by colonial authorities. Some of the themes in his novels are the psychological horrors of war, the lingering trauma of colonialism, and the deconstruction of racial identity. He is known for combining modernist stream-of-consciousness with the rhythmic, incantatory qualities of traditional West African oral storytelling.
Diop has published two acclaimed novels that explore historical gaps and colonial narratives. 1889, l’Attraction universelle (2012) is Diop’s debut novel. It tells the story of a delegation of Senegalese individuals who were exhibited as exotic curiosities at the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, drawing inspiration from historical accounts of “human zoos.” At Night All Blood Is Black (Frère d’âme, 2018) is his second and most celebrated novel. It follows Alfa Ndiaye, a Senegalese tirailleur (infantryman) fighting for the French army during World War I, and explores his descent into madness following the death of his close friend, Mademba. The novel received significant international recognition, which include Prix Goncourt des Lycéens (2018), awarded by a jury of French high school students. The English translation by Anna Moschovakis won the International Booker Prize in 2021, making Diop the first French writer to receive this honour.
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