While many books contains first lines that we forget the second we pass over it, others remain with us for years after we initially read the book. Ellen Foster telling us, “When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy,” rattles in our heads when we put the novel down. Annie Ernaux telling us, “My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon,” stays is our head as Ernaux details the intersections of class, religion, and domestic violence.

The opening of David Diop’s At Night All Blood is Black exists within the same vein, providing an entry point into the novel and continuing to ring in my mind long after I finished the book. Diop’s opening paragraph begins,

. . . I know, I understand, I shouldn’t have done it. I, Alfa Ndiaye, son of the old, old man, I understand, I shouldn’t have. God’s truth, now I know. My thoughts belong to me alone, I can think what I want. But I won’t tell. The ones I might have told my secret thoughts to, my brothers-in-arms who will be left so disfigured, maimed, eviscerated, that God will be ashamed to see them show up in Paradise and the Devil will be happy to welcome them to Hell, will never know who I really am.

Who is Alfa Ndiaye? What did he do? Why will his comrades not recognize him? Why does he tell us that he alone controls his thoughts and they only belong to him? When I read this, these were all questions that I had running through my head. Just as we know that Cholly Breedlove rapes and impregnates Pecola Breedlove at the beginning of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, we know that Alfa has committed some act that he views as unforgivable, an act that will mark him for the remainder of his life. We spend the rest of The Bluest Eye coming to see what leads to Cholly raping Pecola and we spend the rest of At Night All Blood is Black learning about what Alfa did and how he came to own and control his thoughts, not letting other define him.

The conclusion of the opening paragraph leads us to ask even more questions. Alfa continues,

The survivors won’t know a thing, my old father won’t know, and my mother, if she is still of this world, will never find out. The weight of shame will not be added to the weight of my death. They won’t imagine what I’ve thought, what I’ve done, the depths to which the war drove me. God’s truth, the family honor will be spared, the honor of appearances.

We still do not know what Alfa did that causes him so much shame. We ask ourselves, why will his comrades and parents not know anything? Why does he say, of his mother, “if she is still of tis world”? What will they not imagine? What did he Alfa do in the war that causes him so much pain and anguish?

Alfa’s opening worlds grab our attention, leading us to ask various questions that we hope he will answer of the course of the novel. We read onwards in this hope, and over the course of At Night All Blood is Black, he does just that, examining himself and the ways that colonialism, war, and ancestry imopact him. As a Senegalese troop fighting as a colonial subject of the French during World War I, Alfa experiences the racism and subjugation of the French colonial state, and those he leaves behind in Senegal to go fight in Europe know that the war will change him. Either he will die on the battlefield or he will irrevocably turn towards France and the colonial master, turning his back on his homeland.

Along with the fears of those that remain behind, Alfa also deals with the ways that his white French comrades and the white Germans view him. He understands the ways that racism impacts how whites view him, and he uses that to his advantage as he deals with the shame that impacts him at the beginning of the novel. He knows that the Germans see him as a bloodthirsty, uncivilized savage, and that this image of him strikes fear in their hearts. Alfa plays upon this when he attacks the Germans and enacts vengeance upon them for the death of his “more-than-brother” Mademba Diop.

Alfa sees himself as “inhuman,” as vengeance. He sees the impact of war upon him, leading him to do unthinkable things. He comes to see how this unshackling frees him. He tells us, once he reveals to us his shame, “I was now free to listen no longer, to no longer obey the voices that command us not be human when we must.” He becomes what the white French and German soldiers see his as, “a dëmm, a devourer of souls.” Alfa initially rejects this label, but he finds himself, as time progresses, embracing it, devouring the souls of those who seek to subjugate him as a French colonial subject or of those who see to murder him in the war.

Alfa’s story does not just relate the atrocities of war. It lays bare the violence of colonialism against the backdrop of a European war. Through Alfa, a tirailleur sénégalais the novel, as Doyle Calhoun writes,“exposes the caprices of war, asking us to consider what forms of violence appear as legitimate and which are deemed barbaric or ‘mad.’” It lays bare the hypocrisies behind colonial projects, scientific racism, discussions of the civilized and the savage, and the bonds individuals form in times of crisis.

At Night All Blood is Black grabs us by the throat from the opening paragraph and keeps us locked in through its duration. I purposefully left out a lot when discussing this novel, partly because I like to go into books without much knowledge of what will happen or how we will get from point A to all subsequent points. As well, I wanted to highlight the power of Alfa’s opening words and the ways that keep us, as readers, interested in moving forward and learning about him, his shame, and the knowledge that his thoughts belong to him.

I highly recommend Diop’s novel alongside Max Brooks and Caanan White’s The Harlem Hellfighters, René Maran’s Batouala, Leïla Slimani’s In the Country of Others, or William Gardner Smith’s The Stone Face.

What are your thoughts? As usual, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @silaslapham.