San Francisco Public Library

At night all blood is black, by David Diop ; [translated by Anna Moschovakis]

eng

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fiction

At night all blood is black

sound recording

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1250321047

by David Diop ; [translated by Anna Moschovakis]

Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called 'Chocolat' soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man's Land. Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa's mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German's severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfa's deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn't a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater

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