(Paris) A last unpublished novel found in the manuscripts of the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, The Will of King Krogoldis to be published in April, announced the Parisian publishing house Gallimard.
This medieval tale that Céline (1894-1961) called a “Gaelic legend” appears on April 27, according to a program sent Friday evening by the publisher.
Gallimard specified that he would publish two versions, one typewritten by the author, “dating from the first half of the 1930s”, and entitled The Legend of King Renéthen the manuscript bearing the title finally retained, “can be dated to 1939-1940”.
“These two major pieces, unpublished and variously incomplete, are part of the same project while being distinguished by significant stylistic and narrative developments,” said the publishing house.
They come from the nearly 1,200 handwritten sheets that Céline, a fervent collaborationist, had left behind when he fled Paris for Germany in June 1944.
Confiscated by a resistance fighter, then sheltered for three quarters of a century, these writings unexpectedly reappeared in 2021. They gave rise to two unpublished novels published in 2022, War And London.
This new novel, “whose main episodes take place between Brittany and Scandinavia”, recounts “the war waged by King Krogold against the traitorous prince Gwendor, the murder of the prosecutor Morvan by the trouvère Thibaut, Joad’s passion for the beautiful Wanda “explained Gallimard.
Céline had not convinced her publisher, Denoël, to publish this work which clearly stood out from the rest of her novels, contemporary realist fiction. We find extracts from it in one of them, Death on credit.
An unpublished short story from the same manuscripts, The Disgusting Old Womanshould also be published on March 23, in issue 655 of The New French Review devoted in large part to Céline.
Finally, Gallimard must subsequently recast the volumes of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade devoted to Céline, as well as the novel pipe breakerwhich appeared unfinished in 1949, and which will be augmented with unpublished passages.