You're a Senegalese soldier in the First World War, brutally thrown into the front line: because France's black colonial fighters were routinely regarded as expendable in this savage conflict. Your lifelong friend is mortally, agonisingly wounded: he begs you to put him out of his unbearable pain and slit his throat. You can't. You don't. You stay with him until he eventually, and distressingly dies.

This is Alfa's story. With his friend Mademba's death comes overwhelming guilt, and a need to avenge it. He devotes himself to a savage campaign to single out enemy soldiers to disembowel, and remove their hands as a kind of talisman. This is the beginning of his slow descent into madness, as his fellow soldiers come to regard him not with admiration, but with fear. Is this man a sorcerer, a demon? And is his behaviour surprising when we realise, as Alfa eventually did, that his friend died in the defence of a regime which regarded him and his compatriots as expendable ?

Alfa is removed from the front line. This is when we learn his back story, the reason for the bond between the two men, and witness his disturbed mind spiral out of control.

A powerful, bleak novella giving a voice to the often unrecognised contribution of colonial soldiers to France's Great War. ( )

a decent into madness brought about by the horrors of war novel. chilling, heartbreaking, and very well written indeed. As the narrator's madness overtakes him you hope the hints are wrong and will go away, but the tide is unstoppable. Kind of like 'Angels of the Universe' crossed with 'All Quiet on the Western Front' then distilled down to 150 pages. ( )

Powerful, loaded and very eye opening!

My rating 5/5
This is a small book but totally wonderful!!

https://sravikabodapati.wordpress.com/2024/01/26/book-review-at-night-all-blood-... ( )

A Darker Shade of Black

I could not listen to the Audible release which is introduced as “performed” by narrator Dion Graham, and turned to a less dramatic “straight” read by Ray Foushee. I was able to read further but still could not finish.

I felt that the level of violence was unnecessary. I got the point at the third disembowelment. Yes the prose was good but did not reach a level to overcome what I felt was unnecessary gore. ( )

But I, Alfa Ndiaye, I understand the true meaning of the captain's words. No one knows what I think. I am free to think whatever I want. And what I think is that people don't want me to think. The unthinkable is what is hidden behind the captain's words. The captain's France needs for us to play the savage when it suits them. They need for us to be savage because the enemy is afraid of our machetes. I know, I understand, it's no more complicated than that.

Alfa is a twenty-year-old Senegalese soldier fighting for the French colonizers in the trenches of World War I. The book opens with Alfa lying beside his dying brother-in-arms, Mademba. The two had been inseparable throughout childhood and on the battlefield, now Mademba is begging Alfa to "finish him off" rather than let him die in pain and indignity. Alfa refuses to kill his best friend, setting off a downward spiral of doubt, guilt, recrimination, vengeance, and madness. Told entirely from Alfa's point of view, the book is brutal and dark, portraying not only the horrors of war but of colonial racism.

Once I began reading, I could not put the book down, and finished it in a single sitting. I then went back and reread the ending twice more. There is so much to unpack in this small volume. It's also beautifully written, even descriptions of horrible acts read lyrically. It's easy to understand why it won the International Booker Prize in 2021. Although it will not be a book for everyone, if you are interested, I recommend it highly.

Yes, I understood, God's truth, that on the battlefield they wanted only fleeting madness. Madmen of rage, madmen of pain, furious madmen, but temporary ones. No continuous madmen. As soon as the fighting ends we're to file away our rage, our pain, and our fury. Pain is tolerated, we can bring our pain home on the condition that we keep it to ourselves. But rage and fury cannot be brought back to the trench. ( )