The novel is a winner of the International Booker Prize 2021, the European Literary Prize and the Goncourt Lyceum Prize. A hypnotic and heartbreaking story about an inflamed mind unable to cope with grief and the horrors of war. Alpha Ndieu, a Senegalese soldier fighting for France during World War I, loses his friend Mademba Diop on the battlefield. Without his more than brother, Alpha is lonely and lost, but finds salvation in a terrible ritual, which over time begins to frighten his comrades in arms more and more. How far will Alpha go to make amends for his fallen friend? Riddled with bullets and pagan magic, By Night All the Blood Is Black recalls a forgotten chapter in the history of the First World War. Mixing the traditions of oral storytelling with dry journalistic descriptions of the horrors of life in the trenches, David Diop created a story of extraordinary power and defeat about a man's descent into madness. A complex and multifaceted novel. At first it is discouraging, but then it becomes more and more captivating, making you empathize with the hero and his loss. The war in the eyes of the Senegalese volunteer is even more cruel and irrational than in the eyes of Europeans, and the incredibly poetic language of the novel, in which the connection with the African oral tradition is visible, enchants and immerses one in a kind of trance. “So bewitching and deep that it is impossible to forget.” . – Ali Smith “A ruthless look at war, race, masculinity and colonialism.” – Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the novel The Sympathizer.