OPEN A BOOK,OPEN THE WORLD
作者：Diop, David/ Moschovakis, Anna
出版社：Picador USA
年份：2021
ISBN：9781250800206
書號：20279134
裝訂：平裝
定價：$560
優惠價：$476元
At Night All Blood Is Black 《夜裡的血都是黑的》 2021年布克獎得主
本書描述一戰時期一位塞內加爾士兵於法國作戰的故事。本書從主角恩迪亞耶混亂無序的自白開始，我們得知在目睹兒時好友馬丹巴．迪奧普在眼前慘死卻無能為力的情況下，恩迪亞耶陷入絕望並逐漸瘋狂。無端釋放的憤怒指向了敵方的德國士兵，恩迪亞耶一次次英勇地闖陣殺敵，帶回了許多「戰利品」－敵軍殘缺的身體肢臂；歡呼的隊友漸漸為其暴虐的手段感到毛骨悚然。
作者迪奧普從曾祖父真實的經歷獲得靈感，以一對情同手足的好友遠赴異地的戰爭故事，探討了殖民主義、種族主義與戰爭對人們造成的傷痛與悲劇。開頭恩迪亞耶反覆而片斷的敘述也代表了作為被殖民者的一種「失語」，無論是要用殖民者的語言來表達悲痛，或是在戰爭下痛失摯友卻無能為力的情況下，恩迪亞耶作為被殖民者恣意徵召的黑人，在語言與權力上所面對的一種卑微無力。
Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called “Chocolat” soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land.
Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German’s severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfa’s deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn’t a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater. Plans are hatched to get Alfa away from the front, and to separate him from his growing collection of hands, but how does one reason with a demon, and how far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend?
Peppered with bullets and black magic, this remarkable novel fills in a forgotten chapter in the history of World War I. Blending oral storytelling traditions with the gritty, day-to-day, journalistic horror of life in the trenches, David Diop's At Night All Blood is Black is a dazzling tale of a man’s descent into madness.
