"Journey to the End of the Night" by Louis-Ferdinand Celine is a dark, misanthropic novel that follows the protagonist, Ferdinand Bardamu, through various stages of his life, from fighting in World War I to traveling through French colonial Africa, Detroit, and Paris. The narrative is marked with Celine's disgust at humanity's folly, malice, and greed, while also incorporating darkly comic elements and occasional satirical asides. The writing style is described as dense, harsh, and filled with cynical aphorisms that demand attention, creating enduring images that reflect the bitterness and rage at senseless slaughter and environmental destruction.
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Content warnings include graphic depictions of violence, trauma from war, strong nihilism, mental health struggles, and socio-political critiques.
From The Publisher:
Céline's masterpiece-colloquial, polemic, hyper-realistic, boiling over with black humor
Céline's masterpiece-colloquial, polemic, hyper realistic-boils over with bitter humor and revulsion at society's idiocy and hypocrisy: Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of cruelty and violence that hurtles through the improbable travels of the petit bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu: from the trenches of WWI, to the African jungle, to New York, to the Ford Factory in Detroit, and finally to life in Paris as a failed doctor. Ralph Manheim's pitch-perfect translation captures Céline's savage energy, and a dynamic afterword by William T. Vollmann presents a fresh, furiously alive take on this astonishing novel.
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About the Author:
Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) was a French writer and doctor whose novels are antiheroic visions of human suffering. Accused of collaboration with the Nazis, Céline fled France in 1944 first to Germany and then to Denmark. Condemned by default (1950) in France to one year of imprisonment and declared a national disgrace, Céline returned to France after his pardon in 1951, where he continued to write until his death. His classic books include Journey to the End of the Night, Death on the Installment Plan, London Bridge, North, Rigadoon, Conversations with Professor Y, Castle to Castle, and Normance.
Ralph Manheim (1907-1992) was an American translator of German and French literature, as well as occasional works from Dutch, Polish and Hungarian. The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, a major lifetime achievement award in the field of translation, is named in honor of Manheim and his work.
William T. Vollmann is the author of The Atlas (winner of the 1997 PEN Center West Award), Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes, and Europe Central. His nonfiction includes Rising Up and Rising Down which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2003, and his novel Europe Central won the National Book Award in 2005.
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