At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop

I read this because it was on Obama's reading list, but it also won the Booker International prize this past year. It is a small, almost novella sized book that really packs a punch, and is on a subject that is near and dear to my heart, which is the psychological trauma incurred in war and how it can ripple, in this case across ones fellow soldiers, but also across families and even inter-generationally. In World War I the French government drafted soldiers from its colonies, including Senegal. These recruitments were not always voluntary – some men were stripped of their land if they resisted enlistment. This book gives a merciless yet poignant insight into the experience of West Africans who served, died, or had their lives changed forever in the brutal trenches of World War I, fighting for a country that was not theirs. The story is told in the first person by Alfa Ndyaye, a 20-year-old from a rural, innocent village background in Senegal who is persuaded to join his friend and become a low-ranking tirailleur or rifleman in the French army, this story, dedicated to the harsh reality of life, death and everything in between is short but not for the faint-hearted. He holds his friend while he dies, disemboweled, and it changes him forever. He becomes either a super soldier or a mad man, depending on how you see it, and we are in his head while it happens. This is a perfect Armistice Day read.