Welcome! It looks like you still need
to set up your Goodreads account.

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Journey to the End of the Night” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

more photos (2)

Journey to the End of the Night

(Ferdinand Bardamu #1)

Louis-Ferdinand Céline,

Ralph Manheim (Translator)

William T. Vollmann (Afterword)

4.23 · Rating details · 28,998 ratings · 1,634 reviews

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 ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 453 pages

Expected publication: March 31st 2020 by New Directions (first published 1932)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Journey to the End of the Night, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

Best Books of the 20th Century

7,857 books — 48,793 voters

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

100 Best Books of All Time: The World Library List

103 books — 1,745 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.23 ·

Rating details

· 28,998 ratings · 1,634 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of Journey to the End of the Night

Apr 01, 2011 Mike Puma rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: good freakin' question

Shelves: lit-fic, 2012, french-author, new-directions-publishing

Whoa. Just finished, processing, mulling, wondering…what do I say? How do you prepare someone? Should someone be prepared (I wasn’t)? Imagine the most depressing story you’ve ever read (and I’ve read ALL of McCarthy), narrated by the angriest of narrators (who may mellow, then again, maybe readers simply become hardened), describing circumstances that are necessarily ugly (war, colonial Africa) or merely simply ugly (contemporary culture, old people, young people, other people), but then told

...more

flag 225 likes · Like · see review

Jan 14, 2015 Jeffrey Keeten rated it really liked it

Shelves: the-french

“Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself.”

Toni Servillo is Jep Gambardella in The Great Beauty

I watched the Italian film The Great Beauty the other day. The film opens with a quote by ...more

flag 205 likes · Like · see review

Oct 07, 2010 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classic, 1001-book, french, fiction, war, literature, 20th-century

648. Voyage au bout de la nuit = Journey to The End of The Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1932) is the first novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This semi-autobiographical work describes antihero Ferdinand Bardamu. Bardamu 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 648. Voyage au bout de la nuit = Journey to The End of The Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1932) is the first novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This semi-autobiographical work describes antihero Ferdinand Bardamu. Bardamu 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. The novel also satirizes the medical profession and the vocation of scientific research. 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.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و هشتم ماه فوریه سال 1995 میلادی
عنوان: سفر به انتهای شب؛ نویسنده: لوئی فردینان سلین؛ مترجم: فرهاد غبرائی؛ تهران، جامی، 1373؛ در 534 ص؛ شابک: 9645620333؛ چاپ سوم 1383؛ چاپ پنجم 1394؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان فرانسه - سده 20 م
کسی که از آینده حرف بزند، مخش معیوب است. لوئی فردینان سلین
داستان «فردینان باردومو» را روایت می‌کند، که در بین سال‌های جنگ جهانگیر نخست، تا جنگ جهانگیر دوم زندگی می‌کرد. او از روزهای جوانی خویش می‌گوید، که بیشتر به ولگردی و خوشگذرانی بگذشته است. رمان داستان خود «سلین» است. رمان سفر به انتهای شب، یکی از شاهکارهای ادبيات فرانسه است. هنگامی که دکتر «لویی فردینان سلین»، در سن 38 سالگی، دست‌نویس همین رمان خود: «سفر به انتهای شب» را، برای چاپ و نشر فرستاد، ناشرش ایشان را همتای «شكسپیر»، «دانته» و ... خوانده، و پس از انتشار نیز، رمان موفقی بوده است. ا. شربیانی ...more

flag 154 likes · Like · see review

Dec 03, 2018 İntellecta rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, french-literature

Journey to the End of the Night "tells about the life of medical students". Ferdinand Bardamu, from the First World War on bush stories in the deepest Africa and a galley trip to America until the return to France as a poor doctor.
The novel carries mainly autobiographical features. How Celine marches his protagonist Bardamu as a worker, doctor, people and lover through the turmoil of war and the societies in Africa, America and Paris. With one language ahead of the next, Celine's focus on ...more

flag 137 likes · Like · see review

Jun 28, 2016 Steven Godin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, france, history, paris, favourites

From the muddy battlegrounds of the great war and the sweltering infested jungles of French colonial Africa, to his discovery of america where he takes a job in an industrial Detroit and his return to the suburbs of Paris to work as a doctor before finally taking employment in a mental asylum, we follow Céline's alter ego Bardamu with a misanthropic first person narrative through the trials and tribulations of life and trying to make sense of the world around him. Told as a semi-autobiographical ...more

flag 103 likes · Like · see review

May 17, 2007 Greg rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Apparently, for a week or so in June 1997 I either lost my sense of humor or felt some kind of glow of optimism that made me feel the misanthropic subject of this book was boring. My principle memories of reading this for the first time were a) being bored and b) buying a bunch of The Smiths and The Cure tapes at a garage sale.

For some reason when I saw this book sitting on my bookshelf last week I thought I'd give it another try. Why? I don't know exactly. I have lots of unread books, but I Apparently, for a week or so in June 1997 I either lost my sense of humor or felt some kind of glow of optimism that made me feel the misanthropic subject of this book was boring. My principle memories of reading this for the first time were a) being bored and b) buying a bunch of The Smiths and The Cure tapes at a garage sale.

For some reason when I saw this book sitting on my bookshelf last week I thought I'd give it another try. Why? I don't know exactly. I have lots of unread books, but I felt like I might have not gotten everything I could have from the book.

This time I quite enjoyed the book. It's a nice antidote to any feelings that things were probably better 'back in the day', it's good to cleanse the mental palate of this particular delusion now and again. Things were bad then too, which means that if there is a constant in lots and lots o' people being worthy of disgust, then to grumble about it too much can be i) fun, but ii) a tautology and thus ii.a) not really relevant and ii.b) not at all applicable to the discourse of progress/barbarism/ whatever you want to call it. For example; does this mean that most people being shitty fucking assholes is relevant to all of those douchebags wandering around oblivious to anything but their own phone conversations? Is pointing out all of the assholes and defining them as such, really any different than saying all people have heads, and most of them have hair on their heads? And then basing most everything you say about the headedness/hairedness of people? No! Instead is it possible that in a Kantian categorical something or other people can be a priori described as assholes? All of them of course except for you and your loved ones, and me and my loved ones. We are of course the exception. Now, I'm not saying everyone is a piece of shit. And neither is Céline, in fact there is one character who isn't in the book!! One!! There is hope for us yet, sadly that one decent person is stuck sitting on a river in Africa with one other person who is an asshole. But he's out there, you know sort of Kurtz like.

Now I could do a number of things here. I could give a plot synopsis, aka write a book report. I could try to come up with some kind of serious analysis of the book. I could try to write a 'mock' Céline style something or other, that probably wouldn't be too funny. I could ignore the book altogether and write about myself, and use the book as a vague jumping off point; i.e., write all about the types of people I hate and make myself Céline like. I could also post some pictures of animals, which I actually like to do because then I can come back and look at them later and I figure maybe you do too. I could do all kinds of things. I could just end the review here and then strike up a conversation with another goodreader who would actually be me in disguise, but we'd be really witty and surprisingly similarly read in titles that aren't that common; of course I would vote for me too, and if you tried to call me on it I would just ignore you and change topic with myself. I could do any of these things. There are so many choices, and it is so overwhelming in the various ways I can try to fleece votes, which can be cashed in for all the AMAZING prizes that are only available to the people who are on the best reviewer list. Please don't ask for details about these prizes, I've said too much already. ...more

flag 84 likes · Like · see review

Apr 14, 2013 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing

“The sunsets in that African hell proved to be fabulous. They never missed. As tragic every time as a monumental murder of the sun! But the marvel was too great for one man alone. For a whole hour the sky paraded in great delirious spurts of scarlet from end to end; after that the green of the trees exploded and rose up in quivering trails to meet the first stars. Then the whole horizon turned gray again and then red, but this time a tired red that didn’t last long. That was the end. All the ...more

flag 71 likes · Like · see review

Jul 02, 2012 Ben Loory rated it it was amazing

just finished reading it and it really feels like it might be the central book of the entire 20th century. i see catch-22 and henry miller and william burroughs and kerouac and sartre and beckett and bukowski and vonnegut and hunter s. thompson and bret easton ellis and about a million other people... celine's voice is just so clear now, standing behind all of them... it's not even that i like the book so much (though it's ferocious and fun and has a lot of great lines), it's just that it's like ...more

flag 71 likes · Like · see review

Aug 09, 2010 RandomAnthony rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Celine’s Journey to the End of Night is a towering achievement in literary observation through a narrator incapable of self-delusion and a less than stringent filter between his thoughts and his audience. Plus, it’s funny as hell.

The novel reads as the author’s travelogue through war-torn Europe, remote Africa, industrialized America, and post-war France. I have no idea how much of Journey to the End of Night is factual and how much is fiction, and I don’t care either way. At points Celine Celine’s Journey to the End of Night is a towering achievement in literary observation through a narrator incapable of self-delusion and a less than stringent filter between his thoughts and his audience. Plus, it’s funny as hell.

The novel reads as the author’s travelogue through war-torn Europe, remote Africa, industrialized America, and post-war France. I have no idea how much of Journey to the End of Night is factual and how much is fiction, and I don’t care either way. At points Celine sounds like a depraved Jonathan Swift but just as often functions as a spiritual ancestor of Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He riffs on everything from dreary Detroit factories to over-the-top descriptions of African tribal life. He transcends the easy lure of exotic locales by focusing on human relationships in all their debauched, fugacious forms. You know how when people say things like, “oh, people are generally good”? Celine would, ahem, disagree. He’s not mindlessly misanthropic; you get the feeling that if he could find evidence of pure-heartedness (and he thinks children have a shot) he would report it, but he’s not going to lie to make you feel better (unless he does, but then he’ll chastise himself later). In turn, he ditches the subtle narrative convention of “happy endings” (not the kind you get on the side of the interstate, but my guess is Celine would have no problem visiting that type of establishment) and instead wanders through myriad landscapes, especially focusing on the subcultures of the poor and twisted. He’s not their champion, and he’s not going to paint either a pastoral picture of simple poverty or portray the neighborhood residents as mindless animals, but if he had to deviate from the mean he’d probably lean toward the latter. Celine is a master at characterizing the absolute insanity of, for example, war. Instead of singing gentle folk songs against military action he addresses the insane expectation of his military leaders to dodge German bullets in the middle of French farmland roads. And his wide-eyed perceptions of the depths of humanity are more insightful than ponderous. If Celine is trying to teach you a lesson it’s that most human beings are scratching together an existence day to day, keeping their bones and body intact, searching after base pleasures, and really, kind of messed up. People aren’t to blame for this: Journey isn’t a self-help guide (unless, um, you’re looking to seduce French women). But lest I sound as if this book is 344 pages of depressing observation after depressing observation, Celine finds the humor and objectivity to step outside the masquerade and in turn possibly transcend artifice, even for a little while. And although Celine doesn’t equate that transcendence with morality, and might mock me mercilessly for even mentioning the possibility, by acknowledging human need and darkness in all its plain, everyday forms one takes the first step in becoming something other than what some might perceive is the inevitable norm. Celine, for all his misanthropy, carries hope.

I needed close to four weeks to finish off this book; I read slowly and carefully and after some sessions felt exhilarated and exhausted. Don’t give up if after the first twenty pages you think this book will be primarily about Celine’s stretch in the French military. He moves out of his war narration fairly quickly. I also understand that the author was a real-life asshole. I can’t speak for that. His novel stands among the best and most original I have ever read. Journey to the End of the Night, a dark classic of the highest caliber, is a whirlwind of psychological investigation, frenzied comedy, and fascinating discourse on human nature.
...more

flag 64 likes · Like · see review

Nov 09, 2015 Edward rated it really liked it

Shelves: translated, france-algeria, own, fiction, 4-star

Preface to the 1952 Gallimard Edition

--Journey to the End of the Night

Glossary
Afterword, by William T. Vollmann

flag 60 likes · Like · see review

Jan 05, 2008 Alison rated it liked it

Recommends it for: Teenagers that just don't give a fuck; Fans of Burroughs and Jim Morrison (probably also teenagers)

Fifteen years of sitting on my bookshelves and I finally get around to reading it. This is a little bit sad, because I would have loved this book fifteen years ago, when I believed bitter misanthropy and self-indulgent misery were the only true lenses through which humanity should be viewed. Of course, I was in high school at the time (and it was boarding school at that),so that explained it.

At age thirty-two, Journey to the End of the Night set somewhat differently with me. Ferdinand Bardamu's Fifteen years of sitting on my bookshelves and I finally get around to reading it. This is a little bit sad, because I would have loved this book fifteen years ago, when I believed bitter misanthropy and self-indulgent misery were the only true lenses through which humanity should be viewed. Of course, I was in high school at the time (and it was boarding school at that),so that explained it.

At age thirty-two, Journey to the End of the Night set somewhat differently with me. Ferdinand Bardamu's miserable picaresque travails seem more absurd than sympathetic. I read him as foolish and vain and naive, inclined to rattle off world-weary grand pronouncements about the state of civilization. The sort of nihilist one-liners you might expect to find scrawled on the back of a bathroom door in the French Department at your local state university. I'm not entirely sure whether Celine intended his narrator to be a humorous character. Maybe he did. But the overarching, unmitigated darkness and misery of the book is so one-note after about page 100, I found myself wondering whether if it wasn't some elaborate prank, a self-satire. And every now and then, I would get a hint of this. Bardamu's Kafka-esque journey to Africa (during which he manages to incur the wrath of every other person on the ship, for no reason, and barely escapes capital punishment at the hands of a vigilante posse headed up by evil women). His journey out of Africa in the throes of malarial hallucinations (by far, my favorite part of the book . . . I had such high hopes when the Princess of Spain showed up) and subsequent job as a flea-counter at Ellis Island. And the ever-elusive Robinson.

What's frustrating is that parts of this book were brilliant. The language was frequently stunning. Some of the secondary characters were memorable. And maybe it's just that I've grown jaded (though not as jaded as Bardamu) with age. Celine's influence has been substantial. Sartre, Kerouac, Heller, Vonnegut, Robbe-Grillet, Burroughs, and Bukowski count him as a significant influence. And I've read those authors. I even like a couple of them (though Burroughs and Kerouac are two of the most overrated authors in the history of literature and Bukowski is, simply, a complete fucking joke . . . more on that later). Maybe it's just that having read all that followed, I am no longer able to appreciate the "genius" of the original. Or perhaps that's better expressed this way:

A lot of what is good about Journey to the End of the Night is better when Beckett writes it.

...more

flag 53 likes · Like · see review

Nov 23, 2013 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: frogs, read-2015, reviews, reviews-4-stars

Our Journey...

"To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength."

Celine's first novel begins with the words, "Here's how it started" and finishes "...and that would be the end of us."

In between is a journey that takes in childhood, family life, service in the great war, recuperation in a hospital, an adventure in the heart of darkness of colonial Africa, a liberating voyage across the Atlantic, ...more

flag 50 likes · Like · see review

Aug 22, 2017 Tara rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-list

“Misery is like some horrible woman you’ve married. Maybe it’s better to end up loving her a little than to knock yourself out beating her all your life. Since obviously you won’t be able to bump her off.”

Journey to the End of the Night is an exceptionally well-written, scathingly intelligent novel. In it, you encounter the refreshingly misanthropic Bardamu, who leaves France after WWI and travels to Africa and America before coming back to France and the end of the night. It certainly does ...more

flag 50 likes · Like · see review

Oct 11, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, french-20th-c, read-in-french, favorites, novels

Céline was a pretty unsavory human being. An anti-Semite, a misogynist, pretty much full of hate all around. And yet, a fucking amazing writer. His French is both beautiful and vulgar, heart-rending and repulsive, full of interesting characters and yet completely alone. Voyage au bout de la nuit also exists as a graphic novel by Tardi. It is a completely unforgettable novel of devastating beauty that needs to be taken for the literature it is without too much concern for the tortured man that ...more

flag 53 likes · Like · see review

Sep 30, 2019 Jon Nakapalau rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy, crime, psychology, classics, war, cultural-studies, favorites

Poetic nihilism - dissecting the cadaver of existential absurdity not to find a cause of death; but simply because the cuts pass the time in the morgue with a locked door. Truly disturbing: very graphic descriptions of violence and sex.

flag 48 likes · Like · see review

Oct 10, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to MJ by: Mike Puma

Shelves: novels, pernod-and-gauloises

A full-on misanthropic epic, like if E.M. Cioran met Thom Yorke for a fly pie in a Nigerian slum. Céline is a deliberately choppy, lawless stylist, Dostoevskian in his fondness for the nerve-racked ellipsis and the hysterical exclamation point (tics that would characterise his later, practically unreadable, work). Bardamu is the Céline stand-in whose detached cruelty acts as a necessary galvaniser for his adventures in WWI, French-occupied African hinterlands and a stint in a freshly ...more

flag 41 likes · Like · see review

Apr 26, 2016 Chris_P rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics-and-modern-classics, 5-star-diamonds

All you who are reading these very lines right now, are waiting for a review, an analysis maybe of Journey to the End of the Night, I bet. Well, I regret to say that I'll most probably disappoint you. In fact -and I don't mean to talk down the admittedly great job some reviewers have done here- I don't think one can properly review this book. You can talk about it or the way you felt reading it but the true essence of it should be experienced through reading it and not some ridiculous review a ...more

flag 38 likes · Like · see review

Nov 17, 2013 Paul rated it liked it

Shelves: french-novels

This is undoubtedly one of the great novels. It is misanthropic in the extreme; the author really doesn’t like anyone, including himself. Often written in the vernacular, brutal, comic and ranging over three continents and a World War. There is a strong element of the autobiographical in it. It has also influenced more great writers than you can shake a sock at. The list is a remarkable one; Beckett, Sartre (briefly). Genet, Barthes, Miller, Bukowski, Heller, Vonnegut, Ken Kesey, Kerouac, Gunter This is undoubtedly one of the great novels. It is misanthropic in the extreme; the author really doesn’t like anyone, including himself. Often written in the vernacular, brutal, comic and ranging over three continents and a World War. There is a strong element of the autobiographical in it. It has also influenced more great writers than you can shake a sock at. The list is a remarkable one; Beckett, Sartre (briefly). Genet, Barthes, Miller, Bukowski, Heller, Vonnegut, Ken Kesey, Kerouac, Gunter Grass, Burroughs to name a few. Burroughs and Ginsberg both visited him towards the end of his life. Journey was published in 1932 and was his first novel; it is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement.
Those of you who know me may be sensing a but! Well, mostly the foibles of writers are forgivable; we all have them. Celine had his fair share.
In 1937 Celine wrote a tract called Trifles for a Massacre; the first of three tracts. They were rabidly anti-Semitic and racist. Celine threw his lot in with the Nazis and argued for an alliance between France and Germany.
“Who is the true friend of the people? Fascism is.”
“We do not think enough about the protection of the white Aryan race. Now is the time to act, because tomorrow will be too late.”
Once France had fallen Celine supported the Nazis. The head of propaganda for the Nazis in France, Payr, was of the opinion that Celine was too extreme to be helpful.
After the war Celine had to leave France as he was wanted as a collaborator. His opinions did not really change; he became what we would now term a Holocaust denier and in 1957 said that white Aryan Christian civilization ended with the battle of Stalingrad.
John Banville called this the best novel ever written by a far-right sympathizer and I think he may be right. It is also pertinent to bear in mind that many of Celine’s fellow writers fell for the Soviet system rather than fascism. Coincidentally I am reading The Gulag Archipelago at the moment and Stalin also murdered many millions of his fellow countrymen in the name of peace and an ideal society. The difference with those who followed the Soviet path is that most of them abandoned it when it became clear what Marxist-Leninist practice actually involved. Celine stuck to his beliefs.
Interesting to note that the other books I am reading; Orlando, The Gulag Archipelago and The Recognitions, all have a lower average rating than Journey. That, for me, is a bit of a conundrum; whilst it is good and a seminal influence on the Beat generation (that, of course might prejudice some of you against it!), it isn’t in the top rank.
Celine is in the tradition of Balzac, Zola and many of the great French writers. There is also a touch of the Don Quixote about it with the character of Robinson (who crops up fairly regularly) acting as a sort of Sancho Panza. There is a sort of picaresque nihilism about the narrator, Ferdinand Bardamu. The malarial hallucinatory passages in French colonial Africa are pure Heart of Darkness and the industrial passages in America have a touch of Upton Sinclair.
It is ultimately a pessimistic reflection on life. Some may look at ordinary life and people and see nobility, beauty and struggle; Celine sees ugliness, bestiality and pointlessness. I was reminded of the end of a poem by Larkin to sum the whole thing up

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

3.5 stars

...more

flag 36 likes · Like · see review

Dec 04, 2014 Sidharth Vardhan rated it really liked it

Shelves: chandler-s-box, unreliable-narrator, list-le-monde, list-1001, europe, war-genocide, bio-memoir, list-world-library, list-501, list-guardian-100

“The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.”

"When you start hiding from people, it's a sign that you're afraid to play with them. That in itself is a disease. We should try to find out why we refuse to get cured of loneliness. "

Reading Journey is like listening to a drunk old man - the kind one sees in those cowboy movies, telling you why his life sucks. He can't talk about a woman without talking about her legs and there are ...more

flag 35 likes · Like · see review

Nov 28, 2016 Edward rated it liked it

Shelves: literary-fiction, 2016

Journey to the End of the Night was not what I expected. Based on the cover art and description, I had prepared myself for a grim and sombre voyage to the depths of human depravity. Maybe the book simply hasn't aged well, but I thought it was really quite tame - not at all the "literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism" that is promised in the description. And where it does try to push the boundaries, it seems to do so in a very superficial way - for cheap adolescent shock ...more

flag 33 likes · Like · see review

May 15, 2017 david rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

We will not consider the personal politics or prejudices of this author, if only to quell / pacify the legions of followers who attend my words throughout the globe, (about 3 people or less).

Let’s forget the bad stuff that every country produces and rather we will recall some of the behemoths and wonders that France has purveyed.

Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Monet, Gauguin.

Diderot, Sartre, Descartes, Camus.

Stendhal, de Balzac, Hugo (his masterpiece is unequaled).

Escoffier, Roger Verge, Bocuse (david, ...more

flag 32 likes · Like · see review

Jun 21, 2016 Perry rated it liked it

Warning: If you've experienced melancholia or been diagnosed with depression, reading this novel may be inadvisable.
<3.7 stars>

"A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word." Ralph Waldo Emerson

From Journey to the End of the Night:

The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.

****

I cannot refrain from doubting that there exist any genuine realizations of our deepest character except war and illness, those two infinities

...more

flag 30 likes · Like · see review

Sep 24, 2009 Szplug rated it it was amazing

Hilarious, scathing and-oh-so-very-bitter, Journey to the End of the Night is a beautifully written - and translated - paean to misanthropy and the general crumminess of man. The novel comprises the journeys of Céline's alter-ego, Ferdinand Bardemu, from a frightened and bewildered soldier in World War I to the jungles of Central Africa, the materialist and well-kept streets of a booming America, and back again to France to eke out a living as a listless doctor amongst the petty-bourgeois of the ...more

flag 28 likes · Like · see review

Apr 11, 2009 Michael rated it it was amazing

Finally, after a busy week, I have finished my journey to the end of this book. Savage, brutal, disgusting, repulsive, and misanthropic are not necessarily adjectives I would use to describe a masterpiece, but with Celine, they're all meant as compliments.

Is it the most pessimistically scathing book ever written? I think so.

flag 27 likes · Like · see review

Oct 04, 2016 Mark André rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: novels-ii

Cool book. Great read. Bold, Unique and Fascinating. Not for everyone.

flag 30 likes · Like · see review

Nov 21, 2015 Autoclette rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The depth and honesty of this book I think, are often misunderstood as being purely cynical, and depressing. Celine sees the complexities of humanity and gives it to you straight.The truth is an ugly thing to face, but there is beauty here too, not only in the prose, but also in the life lived in these pages. I see some light in his darkness. Don't get me wrong, I don't like people much.

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Apr 05, 2015 Alienor ✘ French Frowner ✘ rated it did not like it

Shelves: go-straight-into-the-wall, classics, french-literature, classics-fr, just-no

This is where I drew the line when I was studying French litterature in Uni. Years after, I still can't do it. Fuck you, Louis-Ferdinand. All your writing style just can't redeem your racist, mysogynist ramblings.

One might say this is fiction. This is NOT. Not when the same author wrote racist pamphlets and repeated the same awful ideas publicly.
...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Nov 17, 2019 Lyn rated it liked it

A nihilistic freight train.

First published in French in 1932, this is still readable and relevant and could be seen as a clarion call for all the pent-up cynicism and aggression of Generation X.

This has been wildly influential and while Celine’s prose may seem pedestrian to a post-modern reader, it is because so many write like him now – we must imagine what a trailblazer this was in the 30s. I can see how this has influenced Joseph Heller, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski and ...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Nov 19, 2012 Henry Martin rated it really liked it

Shelves: permanent-collection

Originally, I thought about writing an eloquent review of this book, but intentions do not always come to bear fruit. The longer I think about it, the less apt I am to do it, so, instead of procrastinating, I'm just going to 'wing it' live on GR.

Here it goes.

I first borrowed this book from a library, but did not finish it in time. Well, I went to a store and bought my own copy. This alone should be enough to tell you that I liked it.

Reading this book took me way longer than it should have, Originally, I thought about writing an eloquent review of this book, but intentions do not always come to bear fruit. The longer I think about it, the less apt I am to do it, so, instead of procrastinating, I'm just going to 'wing it' live on GR.

Here it goes.

I first borrowed this book from a library, but did not finish it in time. Well, I went to a store and bought my own copy. This alone should be enough to tell you that I liked it.

Reading this book took me way longer than it should have, but that is an entirely different matter. Life gets in a way, sometimes.

The Journey to the End of the Night is a very unique book. It deals with multiple themes, as seen through the eyes of the narrator who very well might be Celine himself. It sparkles with brilliant logic, it bores with pragmatic rhetoric, it shines like a torch of enlightenment, and it dumbs down history and geography for the sake of a mischievous joke. Above all, however, it is a wonderful, amazing work of literature.

There are some who disregard Celine for his war time achievements and decorations, and see him as a hypocrite for writing an anti-war novel. Well, those who experienced the war first hand, and succeeded in it, are perhaps the ones best suited to write an anti-war novel. Then again, this is not really an anti-war novel. The first part is, but it goes way deeper than that.

The Journey to the End of the Night is largely a journey into the pitiful bourgeois existence of the middle class men and women we see every day. It is at night that our inner demons come out, hidden under the cover of darkness where Celine observes, a cigarette in one hand, and his penis in the other. Or perhaps not.

It is a journey into the darkness of the human soul. It traverses the first World War, French Colonialism in Africa, immigrants' struggles in America, and the petite bourgeois existence. Thrown into the mix are lust, murder, fleas, suffering, brothels, slavery, camaraderie, rebellion, hope, faith, drinks, and a lot of denial for the sake of escapism.

Above all, it is a story of humanity, not just one man alone. If one considers a plot of any kind, the novel finishes quite unresolved. However, if one considers the narrator as the story, it comes full circle, in a lazy sort of way. The events are circumstantial at best, but there is a raw reality to them. The protagonists are faulty, and the antagonists are very much like the protagonists, often blurring the line between them. After all, is there a clearly defined evil and good in the world, or do the lines blur more frequently than not?

Undeniably, Celine was an author who knew what he was doing. His writing style matches the story perfectly, and he is never too high up on his soapbox to not poke a bit of fun at himself.

I'm glad I ended up purchasing a copy of this book, as I plan to reread it sooner than later. ...more

flag 21 likes · Like · see review

Jul 08, 2013 Stian rated it liked it

Shelves: 2014, owned-books

There is an afterword by William Vollmann in the book (which incidentally starts with "Reader, fuck you!...You think I give a shit whether or not you've read this book? Or that Céline's ghost does? That would be the day!") which I found to be very cool. He asks, Why is Céline a great witer?:

Because he pisses on everything. He's got it all--plot, character, you name it! But it just keeps going right down the urinal! [...] The[se] scene changes become insane, ridiculous. Just when you start to ...more

flag 20 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
CdC - Gruppo di l...: Libro #31 - Viaggio al termine della notte	4	18	May 02, 2019 01:20PM
Oldtimer - Klasik...: Gecenin Sonuna Yolculuk - Kasım 2018 Modern Klasik Okuması	5	38	Nov 10, 2018 01:01PM
Letteratura Postm...: Cinquantottesimo GdL - Viaggio al termine della notte di Louis-Ferdinand Céline	20	55	Oct 24, 2018 02:16PM
Goodreads Librari...: Corrections	3	19	Apr 25, 2018 12:08PM
Goodreads Librari...: Add ISBN-13	3	14	Apr 19, 2018 11:45AM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Fiction

825 users

Classics

409 users

Cultural > France

370 users

European Literature > French Literature

178 users

Literature

170 users

See top shelves…

About Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

1,700 followers

Louis-Ferdinand Céline, pen name of Dr. 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). 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 ...more