First published in 1932, Journey to the End of the Night was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece and a turning point in French literature. Told in the first person, the novel is based on the author's own experiences during the First World War, in French colonial Africa, in the USA - where he worked for a while at the Ford factory in Detroit - and later as a young doctor in a working-class suburb in Paris.
Céline's disgust with human folly, malice, greed and the chaotic state in which man has left society lies behind the bitterness that distinguishes his idiosyncratic, colloquial and visionary writing and gives it its force.
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The most influential novel of the 20th century, Celine's masterpiece is the silent elongated breathless interior scream of a man who doesn't want to be tricked or sold or persuaded or loved or hated or branded or killed. He can never be forgiven for this, nor can he ever forgive himself. His futile efforts are both beautiful and terrible to behold; they lurch from savage humour to empty pathos. - Jeremy (QBD)
Guest, 21/02/2019
