At first treated as an insanely brave hero, as the pile of bodiless hands grows, his fellow soldiers reject him and Alfa finds himself increasingly isolated. His grief and guilt at not offering Mademba a quick death and relief from his agony manifests itself in crazed killing, whereupon Alfa disappears beyond enemy lines in the night and returns with dismembered hands of German soldiers. As the novel opens, he is struggling after the death of his close friend, and fellow Senegalese soldier Mademba. In this way the story separates itself from war stories past in the same way the central character, Alfa, finds himself progressively distant and alone throughout the novel. Younger generations learning this history for the first time may well find it hard to see the heroism in a war with no clear cause, where the cost of life was so monolithic.

There is also no hint of the typical mawkish tone of so many war films and books that can be off-putting, particularly in regard to the First World War and its horrifically high death toll. The opposite is in fact true, and it is refreshing to have a First World War story that focuses on a Senegalese soldier and the experience of the colonial regiments that are so often ignored or erased. It’s understandable why the book may resonate with younger readers, which is not to say that the themes at hand are in any way simplified, or the war’s horrific nature shied away from. At Night All Blood is Black has already seen widespread success in its home country, picking up the Prix Goncourt des Lyceens, an award notable for being voted on by French high school students. In not doing so however, you would run the risk of missing out on this English language debut novel from French Senegalese writer David Diop, translated by the preeminent team at Pushkin Press. In recent years there has been a slew of anniversaries and film adaptions focussing on the First World War, and if your appetite for wartime stories is as small as mine, you would not instinctually go to pick another one up when browsing through the slew of new novels being published this month.

At night all blood is black a novel