David Diop has been selected the winner of this year’s Booker International Prize for his novel, At Night All Blood Is Black. French author Diop and English-language translator Anna Moschovakis will share equally in the £50,000 prize.
Please note: We currently have extremely limited stock of At Night All Blood is Black. Please call your local store to confirm availability before purchasing. We’re working hard to secure more copies, but anticipate a delay of some weeks.
At Night All Blood is Black portrays a young man’s descent into madness and tells the little-heard story of the Senegalese who fought for France on the Western Front during World War I. After his best friend is mortally wounded in combat, Alfa, the protagonist, is alone amidst the savagery of the trenches, far from all he knows and cherishes. He throws himself into fighting with renewed vigour, but soon begins to frighten even his own comrades.
Lucy Hughes-Hallett, chair of the judges, says: ‘This story of warfare and love and madness has a terrifying power. The protagonist is accused of sorcery, and there is something uncanny about the way the narrative works on the reader. We judges agreed that its incantatory prose and dark, brilliant vision had jangled our emotions and blown our minds. That it had cast a spell on us.‘
David Diop is the first French author to win the International Booker Prize. Raised in Senegal, he now lives in France, where he is a professor of 18th-century literature at the University of Pau. At Night All Blood is Black is Diop’s second novel. It was shortlisted for 10 major prizes in France and won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens as well as the Swiss Prix Ahmadou Korouma. It is currently being translated into 13 languages and has already won the Strega European Prize in Italy. Anna Moschovakis is a poet, author and translator, whose works include the James Laughlin Award–winning poetry collection You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake and a novel, Eleanor: or, The Rejection of the Progress of Love.
The Booker International Prize is awarded every year for a single book, which is translated into English and published in the UK. Read more about the Prize here.
