Is now the right time to publish a novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline?
A newly translated book by an antisemitic French novelist is sure to spark debate
Ferdinand wakes up on a battlefield, his ear glued to the ground with blood. The mud around him is littered with shells. He is unable to move his arm, and there is a terrible ringing in his ears “like a train”. The noise will never leave him, for it is Belgium in 1915, and Ferdinand has “caught the war in my head”. Nearby a man has exploded “like a grenade”; two rats live in what is left of his abdomen.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Monster, Inc?”
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