Summary

David Diop's At Night All Blood Is Black employs a first person narrator who speaks in the past tense. The novel follows the story of Alfa Ndiaye, "son of the old, old man," as he shares his experience in the trenches fighting in World War I (1). Alfa is Senegalese fighting as a Chocolate soldier on behalf of the French army. Chapter 1 opens with him recalling the torturous death of his childhood best friend, his "more-than-brother," Mademba Diop (4). Mademba died a slow, agonizing, and gruesome death, "his guts in the air, his insides outside" (4). Alfa remembers how Madema begged him to kill him three times to kill him right there, to spare him from an undignified and painful death. Alfa refused because he thought that killing a friend - even a friend in profound agony - was wrong. As he tells readers the story...