War

First ever English translation of an unpublished work by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the author of Journey to the End of the Night.

The scene opens in a smouldering orchard in Flanders, where the French soldier Ferdinand, shell-shocked, badly wounded and surrounded on all sides by mud, corpses and destruction, tries to find his way to safety and make sense of what has happened to him since he lost consciousness. His hallucinatory wanderings eventually take him to the military hospital of Peurdu-sur-la-Lys. There, after narrowly cheating death, he strikes up a friendship with a Parisian pimp and continues to be confronted with the moral chaos and side effects of war in all their vicious and repulsive senselessness and brutality.

Written around 1934, only a couple of years after Journey to the End of the Night, War shares its protagonist, its setting and many of its themes with Céline’s most celebrated novel. Its manuscript, considered lost after being looted during the Liberation of Paris, re-emerged in France in 2020, sparking a frenzy of interest and being hailed as a major rediscovery. Translated now for the first time into English, War is a powerfully vivid, unflinching, darkly comical exploration of the physical and mental trauma of the Western Front, which provides a fascinating missing link in the writing career of one of the greatest – and most controversial – authors of the twentieth century.

If you enjoyed this book, you might like to read other works by Céline: Journey to the End of the Night, Death on Credit, Guignol’s Band, London Bridge.

Alma Classics is committed to making available a wide range of literature from around the globe. Most of the titles are enriched by an extensive critical apparatus, notes and extra reading material, as well as a selection of photographs. The texts are based on the most authoritative edition and edited using a fresh, accessible editorial approach. With an emphasis on production, editorial and typographical values, Alma Classics aspires to revitalize the whole experience of reading classics.

About the Author 

Louis-Ferdinand Céline 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.

About the Translator

A linguist and a polyglot, Sander Berg is Head of Modern Languages at Harrow School. Originally from the Netherlands, Berg is also a freelance translator, publishing English translations of literary texts, children’s books and art history books from French, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese. War (Alma Books, 2024) is the first English-language translation of the uncorrected proofs of Guerre by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, published posthumously in 2022.

Dimensions: 13.2 x 1.7 x 19.9 cm