I hated this book so much. But it was so well written, with such rhythm, and so haunting and awful that I cannot find any fault with it. So I give it one star for how much I enjoyed it, 5 stars for how well written it was. It is full of grief and torture and cruelty. It is also awful from a woman's perspective- trenches compared to a woman's vagina, women being kidnapped and raped and used as metaphors for catastrophes and colonialism. Nothing good is going down in Senegal during WW1, you can rest assured of that.