This heartbreaking and poetic novel addresses a story woefully absent from French history books

Guardian

From the very first pages, there is something beguiling about At Night All Blood Is Black... By the time we reach its shocking yet ultimately transcendent ending, the story has turned into something mystical... More than a century after World War I, a great new African writer is asking these questions in a spare yet extraordinary novel about this bloody stain on human history

- Chigozie Obioma, New York Times Book Review

A short, powerful novel... Diop presents a world with no firm dividing line between courage and madness, murder and warfare; the most dedicated killers are awarded the Croix de Guerre. Alfa's final transformation, as he attempts to atone for his guilt over the death of his friend, is unexpected, poetic - and chilling

Spectator

An unrelenting take on war, race, masculinity, and colonialism... Diop's short, sharp, and serrated novel is a visceral dramatization of how our humanity and inhumanity are forever intertwined

Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer

Part folklore, part existential howl, and part prose poem, it is a heartbreaking account of pointless suffering... A searing, eye-opening tale of innocence destroyed

Kirkus (starred review)

The ending leaves me open mouthed

Ian McMillan, BBC Radio 3's The Verb

Visceral, harrowing, yet absolutely riveting

Refinery 29

Spare and devastating... An outstandingly affecting, genre-defying nightmare

Shelf Awareness

A powerful, truthful look at the meaningless horror of war from the perspective of those whose experience as soldiers from colonial countries has been so undervalued and unexplored

Culturefly

Dark, powerful and hypnotic... Breathtaking!

Livres Hebdo

'This haunting tale of a Senegalese man's experience in WWI is a poetic look at the horrors of war and its effect on mental health'

Buzzfeed

Astonishingly good

NPR.org

There is great beauty here... The narrative flows along with the chilly beauty of the river Styx, and its sorcerer's ending makes it utterly distinct... At Night All Blood is Black runs explicitly, and refreshingly, against the grain

Foreign Policy

Has an incomparable literary force

Libraire

A powerfully rhythmic style, at once classic and contemporary, strewn with strong, evocative imagery

L'Humanité

This novel is a wonder. Written in a simple, almost naive, yet astonishing style, it speaks of the tragedy of the trenches with a moving delicacy

Tahar Ben Jelloun, Le Point

A novel of lacerating power

Libération

With its oral styles, its mantra-like repetitions, At Night All Blood is Black captivates more surely than a classic war novel [and] gives a voice to those we have seldom heard speak before

Le Figaro

A plunge into the horrors of war. A philosophical inquiry into betrayal and loyalty. But also a book emigration, a voyage into the sorrow-crushed soul of the one who chooses to leave, and a magnificent parable on the impossibility of return

Les Inrockuptibles

Interweaves the inexpressible cruelty of the battlefield with a beautiful ode to universal friendship

Le Journal du dimanche

A particularly pertinent reflection on the evils of war, as well as a profound exploration of the human soul

- J.M. Le Clézio, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature,

David Diop here erects a beautiful monument to the Senegalese riflemen, and seeks to restore their African dimension; to listen to them, to understand them

Mathias Énard, Le Monde

Diop is sure to earn readers with this feverish exercise in psychological horror

Publishers Weekly

A dark story told in lyrical prose... Rhythmic, enchanting fiction

The AV Club