David Diop wins International Booker Prize for 'At Night All Blood Is Black'

Berlin: 'At Night All Blood is Black', a novel by French-Senagalese writer David Diop, translated from French by Anna Moschovakis, has won the International Booker Prize. The author and translator will receive £50,000 (€58,000/$71,000). The prize was presented at the Coventry Cathedral in the UK City of Culture 2021. 

"I am at once flattered and I sort of feel as though I am living in a dream — a waking dream," said Diop, an author and academic who in 2018 won France's top literary prize, the Prix Goncourt des Lyceens, for his novel Frere d'ame. He is the first French and the first African writer to win the prize.

Translator Anna Moschovakis quoted writer and translator John Keane to affirm the principle of cultural diversity that is central to the International Booker. "What does it mean to be together without being the same, to fully accept the idea of difference," she said.

All the judges read all the 123 books written in dozens of languages entered for this year's prize before a shortlist of six was announced in April.

Last year's International Booker winner was then-29-year-old Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld for her quirky novel, The Discomfort of Evening.

The Booker Prizes Tweeted out the news of the latest winner.