Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

The disparate elements of the work are linked together by recurrent encounters with Léon Robinson, a hapless character whose experiences parallel, to some extent, Bardamu's experiences. The novel also satirizes the medical profession and the vocation of scientific research. This semi-autobiographical work describes antihero Ferdinand Bardamu.īardamu is involved with World War I, colonial Africa, and post–World War I United States (where he works for the Ford Motor Company), returning in the second half of the novel to France, where he becomes a medical doctor and establishes a practice in a poor Paris suburb, the fictional La Garenne-Rancy. Journey to the End of the Night (1932) is the first novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. (Book 648 from 1001 books) - Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit = Journey to The End of The Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Henry Miller, William Burroughs, and Charles Bukowski have all cited him as an important influence.

He then received amnesty and returned to Paris in 1951. He fled to Germany and Denmark in 1945 where he was imprisoned for a year and declared a national disgrace. After embracing fascism, he published three antisemitic pamphlets, and vacillated between support and denunciation of Hitler. Their experiences are featured prominently in his fiction.Īlthough he is often cited as one of the most influential and greatest writers of the twentieth century, he is certainly viewed as a controversial figure.

Released from military service, he studied medicine and emigrated to the USA where he worked as a staff doctor at the newly build Ford plant in Detroit before returning to France and establishing a medical practice among the Parisian poor. While serving on the Western Front he was wounded in the head and suffered serious injuries-a crippled arm and headaches that plagued him all his life-but also winning a medal of honour. After an education that included stints in Germany and England, he performed a variety of dead-end jobs before he enlisted in the French cavalry in 1912, two years before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

His parents were poor (father a clerk, mother a seamstress). Louis-Ferdinand Destouches was raised in Paris, in a flat over the shopping arcade where his mother had a lace store.

His highly innovative writing style using Parisian vernacular, vulgarities, and intentionally peppering ellipses throughout the text was used to evoke the cadence of speech. Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, is best known for his works Voyage au bout de la nuit ( Journey to the End of the Night), and Mort à crédit ( Death on the Installment Plan).

Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline