A Frenchman wins a Man Booker prize for a novel about the horrors of World War II

Today, Wednesday, the novel “At Night All Blood is Black”, by French writer David Diop, won the Booker International Prize for Fiction.

The novel beat five other contenders for the prize, and its author was awarded a $70,000 reward, which he will share with translator Anna Moshkovakis.

The novel tells the story of Alpha Ndiaye, a Senegalese soldier fighting for colonial France during World War I.

Diop’s novel was chosen by a majority decision of the five-member jury, as it excelled in a list that included the novel “In Memory of Memory” by the Russian writer Maria Stepanova, and the fictional short story collection “The Dangers of Smoking in Bed” by the Argentine writer Mariana Enriquez.

Born in France and raised in Senegal, Diop teaches 18th-century literature at the University of Pau in southern France.

Source: “Associated Press”