Voyage au bout de la nuit.

Paris: Editions Denoël et Steele,, 1932. It is the lonely traveller who goes the furthest First trade edition, first printing, this copy preserving the scarce publisher's wraparound band. Published to immediate and widespread critical acclaim, this was the author's debut novel, winner of the Prix Rénaudot in 1932. It influenced generations of authors including Henry Miller, George Orwell, Henry Green, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowsky, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Perhaps anticipating a reaction from the public to Celine's often shocking style, the publishers wrote on the wraparound band: "We should not misunderstand the tone of this extraordinary novel, the violence of its sarcasm, and the particularly ferocious traits of its satire... in this book of prodigious variety and picturesqueness, he [the author] has no other ambition than to approach life: unprejudiced minds will have to bow before the honesty of his testimony". Voyage au bout de la nuit captured the anxieties of an era, and contemporary French critics described it as a "violent dream" and an "epic of despair", the journal Le Figaro adding that, "aside from the Surrealists and Dadaist, few had expressed more violently the existential despair that preoccupied so many in these years" (quoted in Sanos, p. 158). The novel "struck a chord mostly because of the way it spoke of the experience of modernity. It offered a rather bleak vision of the world through the eyes of its hero, Fernand Bardamu, and did so in a manner that seemed novel, fresh, and perfectly in tune with its time. It was epic with a popular voice" (Sanos, pp. 158-9). Orwell famously described it as "a book-with-a-purpose, and its purpose is to protest against the horror and meaninglessness of modern life – actually, indeed, of life. It is a cry of unbearable disgust, a voice from the cesspool" (Orwell, p. 85). This is the uncommon first printing of the trade edition, with the following points: "Grande Imprimerie de Troyes" imprint in the colophon, "Le Flute Corsaire" advertised on the bottom right of rear wrapper as "Sous presse" and with no imprint below the red frame, and a lowercase "m" printed upside down on page 150, line 10. This copy also has the lowercase "m" printed upside down on page 541, line 37 and eight pages of publisher's advertisements at the rear on grey-blue paper dated 1932; these points, often quoted, are not indicative of priority. Octavo. Original white wrappers printed in red and black. With publisher's wraparound band. With 8 pp. of advertisements at rear. Light fingersoiling and couple of spots of foxing to wrappers, extremities a little rubbed, nick at head of rear cover, short splits at ends of front joint, but sound, contents uniformly toned as usual. A very good copy, preserving the fragile wraparound band, slightly nicked, else intact and unfaded. En français dans le texte 366; Connolly, The Modern Movement 74. George Orwell, Selected Essays, 2021; Sandrine Sanos, The Aesthetics of Hate, 2013.