Journey to the End of the Night (Paperback)

Ralph Manheim

ISBN 10: 0811216543 / ISBN 13: 9780811216548

Published by New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York, 2006

About this Item

Paperback. Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the reading public in Europe, and later in America where it was first published by New Directions in 1952. The story of the improbable yet convincingly described travels of the petit-bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I, to the African jungle, to New York and Detroit, and finally to life as a failed doctor in Paris, takes the readers by the scruff and hurtles them toward the novel's inevitable, sad conclusion. The dark side of On the Road: instead of seeking kicks, the French narrator travels the globe to find an ever deeper disgust for life. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780811216548

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Journey to the End of the Night (Paperback)
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811216543
• ISBN 13: 9780811216548
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Authors

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. He won many awards in his lifetime, including a MacArthur genius grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship ,and a National Book Award.

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.