As part of the ceremony, the presidents of France and Mali introduced a monument to the “Black Army”-West African soldiers from France’s former colonies. The book first came out in French in 2018, the year Europe commemorated the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Adding authenticity to the narrative, Moschovakis keeps several Wolof (Senegalese) words. Moschovakis’s English translation reads like a prose poem. About half of these men came from Senegal.ĭiop considers the effects of colonization to be horrific, not humane, and says as much in his second novel, translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis, an editor, poet and translator. In an interview, Diop said that the Black soldiers of World War I were part of a “silenced history.” Their mistreatment was underreported because their marginalization refuted the French narrative that colonization was humane.įrance sent about 450,000 troops from West Africa and North Africa to fight against the Germans in World War I. Describing the experiences of 11 members of a Senegalese delegation to the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, the novel was inspired by 19th-century “human zoos,” in which Black people were exhibited behind bars with monkeys as objects of curiosity.

Diop’s first book, 1889, l’Attraction Universelle, was also a work of historical fiction. He teaches French and African literature and is known for his study of prejudice and its negative impact on both Black and white lives.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett, chair of the judges, noted the terrifying power of this story of warfare, love and madness.īorn in Paris to an African father and a French mother, Diop was raised in Senegal and grew up to become a university professor. The novel won the 2021 Booker International Prize, considered to be the most prestigious award for fiction in translation. Their experience provides much of the background for David Diop’s disturbing second novel, At Night All Blood Is Black. At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop (translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis)

At night all blood is black author