
Death on Credit
Louis-Ferdinand Celine(Author)
Alma Classics (Publisher)
Published on 26. January 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
580 pages
978-1-84749-634-8 (ISBN)
Description
When Celine's first novel, Journey to the End of the Night was first published in 1932, it created an instant scandal, being extravagantly praised by its supporters and savagely attacked by its horrified opponents. Four years later came the sequel, Death on Credit. Both were a new kind of novel, frank about the author's thoughts and actions in ways that readers had never encountered, ultra-realistic - and full of incidents that could not possibly be true to life - and characters that stretched the imagination.
In Death on Credit, Ferdinand Bardamu, Celine's alter ego, is a doctor in Paris, treating the poor who seldom pay him but who take every advantage of his availability. The action is not continuous but goes back in time to earlier memories and often moves into fantasy, especially in Bardamu's sexual escapades; the style becomes deliberately rougher and sentences disintegrate to catch the flavour of the teeming world of everyday Parisian tragedies, the struggle to make a living, illness, venereal disease, the sordid stories of families whose destiny is governed by their own stupidity, malice, lust and greed. This fascinating book by one of the greatest twentieth-century novelists is an unforgettable experience for the reader.
In Death on Credit, Ferdinand Bardamu, Celine's alter ego, is a doctor in Paris, treating the poor who seldom pay him but who take every advantage of his availability. The action is not continuous but goes back in time to earlier memories and often moves into fantasy, especially in Bardamu's sexual escapades; the style becomes deliberately rougher and sentences disintegrate to catch the flavour of the teeming world of everyday Parisian tragedies, the struggle to make a living, illness, venereal disease, the sordid stories of families whose destiny is governed by their own stupidity, malice, lust and greed. This fascinating book by one of the greatest twentieth-century novelists is an unforgettable experience for the reader.
Reviews / Votes
The most blackly humorous and disenchanted voice in all of French literature. * London Review of Books *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Richmond
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Alma Books Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 126 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
412 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84749-634-8 (9781847496348)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
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Persons
LOUIS-FERDINAND CELINE (1894-1961) was one of the most controversial authors of the twentieth century, a writer who mixed realism with imaginative fantasy, and, like his contemporary Henry Miller, an iconoclast who shocked many of his readers. His experiences as a soldier during the First World War and as a physician treating the poor in the suburbs of Paris gave him a jaundiced view of humanity, which he poured into a unique style of prose that is at the same time blackly humorous, daring and unsettling.