Among the manuscripts by Louis-Ferdinand Céline that reappeared during the summer of 2021, all vanished from the writer’s apartment at the time of the Liberation of Paris in June 1944, London is the bulkiest. Direct continuation of War, with a strong autobiographical content, it takes us into the electric footsteps of Ferdinand, narrator and alter ego of Louis Destouches, who followed Angèle to the British capital, a prostitute who had her husband shot to get rid of her. Filled with characters, anecdotes and adventures, nourished by the thwarted loves of the narrator, the novel is an open window on the world of prostitution, drug trafficking, slums and petty violence in 1915 London. completed — unlike Guignol’s BandCéline’s other London novel — but still quite raw, almost watered down, London is the novel of resourcefulness, wandering and exile. A new Céline, certainly, but messy and more naturalistic than usual.
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