Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1894-1961) is best known for his early novels "Journey to the End of the Night" (1932)--which Charles Bukowski described as the greatest novel of the past 2,000 years--and "Death on the Installment Plan" (1936), but this delirious, fanatical "biography" predates them both. Th[...]

Originally published to shocked reviews in 1932 France, a scathing literary critique of what the writer believed to be the poor judgment and hypocrisy of society follows the travels of petit-bourgeois anti-hero Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I and the African jungle to America and Paris.[...]

Accompanied by his wife, their cat, and an actor friend, our autobiographical narrator Ferdinand leaves Paris for Baden-Baden (a World War II hideaway for wealthy Germans), is then sent to a bombed-out Berlin, and finally leaves for Denmark in search of the gold he had stashed there prior to the war[...]

Often comic and always angry, the first-person autobiographical narrator, with his wife and their cat in tow, takes the reader with him on his flight from Paris to Denmark after finding himself on the losing side of World War II. The train rides that encompass the novel are filled with madness and m[...]

When Celine's first novel, "Journey to the End of the Night" was first published in 1932 it created an instant scandal, being extravagantly praised by its supporters and savagely attacked by its horrified opponents. Four years later came the sequel, "Death on Credit". Both were a new kind of novel, [...]

A major work by one of France's most important authors of the twentieth centurey, London Bridge is a riotous novel about the London underworld during World War I. Picking up where its predecessor Guignol's Band left off, Celine's semi-autobiographical narrator recounts his disastrous partnership wit[...]

Der erbarmungsloseste Roman des 20. Jahrhunderts Mit ?Reise ans Ende der Nacht? begann ein neues Kapitel in der Geschichte des Romans: Ein wilder Aufschrei gegen die Verkommenheit einer Welt, die alle ihre Rechnungen auf Kosten der Armen begleicht, einer Welt, in der Hass und Niedertracht regiere[...]

Kuolema luotolla alkaa siitä mihin Niin kauas kuin yötä riittää päättyy, slummilääkärin arkipäivän kuvauksesta, mutta siirtyy huomaamatta kertojaminä Ferdinandin lapsuuteen 1890-luvun Pariisissa. Omille lapsuudenmuistoilleen rakentaen Céline kuvaa Ferdinandin vanhempia, jatkuvasti vali[...]