David Diop (novelist)

For the 20th-century French West African poet, see David Diop.

David Diop
Born	(1966-02-25) February 25, 1966 Paris, France
Nationality	French
Alma mater	Paris-Sorbonne University

David Diop (born 1969) is a French novelist and academic. A specialist in 18th-century literature, he was awarded the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens in 2018 and the International Booker Prize in 2021 for his novel At Night All Blood is Black (first published in French in 2018 as Frère d'âme).

Biography

David Diop was born in Paris in 1966 to a French mother and a Senegalese father. He moved to Dakar at the age of five and spent the majority of his childhood in Senegal before returning to study in France at the age of eighteen after finishing high school. Diop received a doctorate from the Sorbonne for his studies on 18th-century French literature.

In 1998, he became a lecturer in literature at the University of Pau and the Adour Region specialising in 18th-century French literature and in African French literature. In 2009 he was appointed to head a research group on the representation of Africa and Africans in 17th- and 18th-century European literature. He received his habilitation in 2014. Diop now heads the arts, languages, and literature department at the university. He lives in Pau.

Early works

He published his first book, a work of historical fiction titled 1889, l'Attraction universelle, in 2012. The novel describes the experiences of 11 members of a Senegalese delegation to the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

In 2018, he published his first full-length scholarly work, Rhétorique nègre au xviii^e siècle, which deals with the representation of Africans in 18th-century travel writing and abolitionist texts.

Frère d'âme / At Night All Blood Is Black

Main article: At Night All Blood is Black

Diop's second novel, Frère d'âme, which interweaves the history of World War I with the history of colonialism, was published in 2018. The novel describes the experiences of Senegalese Tirailleurs fighting for France in the trenches. The main character, Alfa Ndiaye, descends into madness following the death of a childhood friend and inflicts extreme brutality upon his German enemies. Diop was inspired to write the book by his great-grandfather's service in the Tirailleurs during the war. Because his great-grandfather refused to speak about the war Diop read many published accounts regarding the Tirailleurs' service.

Frère d'âme was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt, the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Médicis and the Prix Femina and six other French literary prizes. In 2018 Diop received the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens for the novel. He also won the Swiss Prix Ahmadou-Kourouma.

Frère d'âme was published in English translation in November 2020 under the title At Night All Blood Is Black. It won the 2020 Los Angeles Times Fiction Book Prize. Together with his translator Anna Moschovakis he won ⁦the 2021 International Booker Prize. This made him the first French person and first person of an African heritage to win the prize.

The novel is being translated into 13 languages. The Italian translation has won the Strega European Prize, and the Dutch translation has won the Europese literatuurprijs.