Journey to the End of the Night

By: Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Narrated by: David Colacci

Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every minute 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 published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the public in Europe, and later in America, where it was first published by New Directions in 1952. The story of the improbable, yet convincingly described travels of the petit-bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I, to the African jungle, to New York and Detroit, and finally to life as a failed doctor in Paris, takes the listeners by the scruff and hurtles them toward the novel's inevitable, sad conclusion.

©1952 Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Translation copyright 1983 by Ralph Manheim. Afterword copyright 2006 by William T. Vollmann (P)2016 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Céline showed me that it was possible to convey things that had heretofore seemed inaccessible. " ( New York Times)

Perfect

This novel is litterally perfect. Robinson is one the the greatest charactors of all time.

what a shame

great story but the performance is unbearable and changes the story to the like of a motorcycle hum

Hysterical

Sarcastic, hysterical, black and beautifully insightful and narrated. I cannot imagine this book in a different, better voice.

Classic absurdism

Celine's first novel reads like a fever dream of exquisite language. It deflty captures so much of life's absurdity and the meaningless nature of our search for meaning and purpose before we die.

Trauma of war

After being injured in WWI, a man searches for a place to fit in in the world. Traveling to different countries and continents still brings no relief.