“London”, the sequel to Celine’s new releases, will be released in October in France – rts.ch

An unpublished novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, “Londres”, drawn from manuscripts found after decades in which they had disappeared, is due to appear on October 13 in France, the publisher Gallimard said on Thursday.

This publisher had published in May the unpublished “War”, a novel centered on the convalescence of a soldier seriously wounded at the front in 1915 and traumatized.

“London” is taken from manuscripts abandoned by Céline, a collaborationist, when he left Paris in June 1944 for Germany.

Following an itinerary that is not known, these manuscripts were given to a journalist, Jean-Pierre Thibaudat. After having kept them secret for a long time, he had to return them to Celine’s heirs in June 2021.

The direct sequel to “War”

“War” ended with the departure of the protagonist, Brigadier Ferdinand, for England. “London”, written in 1934, “is the direct result”, explained Gallimard in its publication program.

>> To read also: With the publication of the unpublished “War”, Céline becomes a writer again

“It imposes itself as the great story of a double vocation: that of writing and that of medicine. Or how to stand as close as possible to the truth of men, in the midst of this outrageous and misleading farce that is life,” the editor added.

Also seriously wounded during the First World War, Céline left for the British capital in 1915, assigned to the French consulate. There is only one year left.

This period is evoked in “Guignol’s Band”, a novel published in 1944, and “Le pont de Londres (Guignol’s Band II)”, published in 1964, three years after the death of the author.

The milieu of prostitution depicts

These novels have in common to depict the world of prostitution. In “London”, “Ferdinand takes up residence in an attic of Leicester Pension, where Cantaloup, a pimp from Montpellier (south of France, editor’s note), organizes intense sex trafficking with the complicity of a policeman”, indicates Gallimard.

With some 140,000 copies sold to date, “War” has been a success in bookstores, accompanied by favorable reviews for this striking evocation of the human damage of the Great War.

Must follow a revised version of “Casse-pipe”, an unfinished novel published in 1949 on life in the barracks before the First World War, and “The legend of King Krogold”, a medieval tale that the publisher Denoël had refused.

afp / eye

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