Winner of the 2021 International Booker Prize. A hypnotic, heartbreaking rendering of a mind hurtling towards madness, shattered by grief and the horror of war. Translated by Anna Moschovakis.
By David Diop
Translated by Anna Moschovakis
The 2021 International Booker Prize
David Diop, a French writer and academic, won the prize with his unsettling tale, translated by Anna Moschovakis, of two Senegalese soldiers fighting in the trenches of the First World War.
Diop, who is half-Senegalese, spent much of his childhood in Dakar and was inspired to write At Night All Blood is Black by the lack of historical information around the many African soldiers who fought and died for France in the war. As an academic, Diop specialises in 18th century literature, and his novel, in which a soldier is unhinged by the death of his comrade, weaves in old European racial stereotypes of African savagery. In the poet and novelist Moschovakis, Diop found an attuned translator: she too has split heritage - American and Greek.
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- By
- David Diop
- Translated by
- Anna Moschovakis
- Published by
- Pushkin Press
Winner of the 2021 International Booker Prize. A hypnotic, heartbreaking rendering of a mind hurtling towards madness, shattered by grief and the horror of war. Translated by Anna Moschovakis.
The shortlist
Maria Stepanova’s unique portrait of a family is imbued with rare intellectual curiosity and a wonderfully soft-spoken, poetic voice. Translated by Sasha Dugdale.
Translated by Sasha Dugdale
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021. Mariana Enríquez populates contemporary urban Argentina with a macabre cast of crooked witches, unruly teenagers, homeless ghosts and hungry women. Translated by Megan McDowell.
Translated by Megan McDowell
Olga Ravn explores what it really means to be human, while questioning the logic of productivity and a life governed by work. Translated by Martin Aitken.
By Olga Ravn
Translated by Martin Aitken
Éric Vuillard tells the story of a man whose life casts light on the brutal times in which he lived - a period when, yet again, Europe was in flux. Translated by Mark Polizzotti.
Translated by Mark Polizzotti
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021. Benjamín Labatut’s extraordinary imagination digs deep into the territory between fact and fiction, progress and destruction, genius and madness. Translated by Adrian Nathan West.
Translated by Adrian Nathan West
The longlist
The 2021 judges
Watch the ceremony
