Baskets of hands were clear evidence of colonialism’s cruelty, both to critics at the time and in historical hindsight. The cutting off of hands was a feature of colonial conquest, most famously in the Congo Free State, where the Belgians removed the hands of those who failed to collect their quota of rubber. It’s impossible to read this book without thinking about the ugly history of severed hands in Africa. Alfa’s hand-cutting behavior “isn’t regulation,” as his commander tells him before sending him to the rear to recuperate. The Africans fear that he has become a sorcerer or a cannibal, and the French officers believe he has lost his mind. After initially celebrating his bravery, his fellow soldiers begin to turn against him. As he sees it, Alfa is committing to the pantomime of savagery the French officers expect of African soldiers, becoming the “butcher of human flesh” they want him to be.

He does this seven more times, preserving the hands in salt in the trench kitchen to keep as talismans. He then cuts off a hand to take back to his unit. He seeks out a German soldier - one with blue eyes - whom he ambushes, drags into no-man’s-land, tortures, disembowels, and watches die. When his unit goes over the top in an attack, he holds back until the engagement is over, camouflages himself with mud, and lies in wait. I thought only of disemboweling the enemy from the other side.” Alfa begins to act strangely in battle. “God’s truth, I thought only of gutting the half-dead blue-eyed enemy. His friend is badly wounded on the battlefield and, dying in Alfa’s arms, begs to be put out of his misery.

Our hero is Alfa, a young Senegalese infantryman fighting in the French Army. The book’s incantatory gore makes it a critique of war along the lines of All Quiet on the Western Front, but in Diop’s hands something else is also going on. Like many novels about the Western Front, it puts the horror of trench warfare front and center. A short, visceral book, it tells the story of an African soldier’s imbrication in World War I. David Diop’s At Night All Blood Is Black, originally published in French in 2018, was one of the most decorated novels of that year, winning the Prix Goncourt, and its English translation by Anna Moschovakis won the 2021 International Booker Prize. BEAUTIFULLY WROUGHT VIOLENCE makes for gripping novels and murky ethics.

At night all blood is black analysis