قصة الكتاب :
Journey to the end of the night is a novel by French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Celine, first published in French in 1932 and subsequently in English in 1934. Although Celine’s first novel shocked critics initially, it quickly became popular with the reading public. The popularity it received gave it critical acclaim and the work was considered a turning point in French literature. The book is semi-autobiographical and is narrated in the first person by Ferdinand Bardamu, Celine’s fictional alter ego. The language used in the novel is raw and colloquial and traces the travels of its anti-hero, whose experiences are loosely based on Celine’s own; through the trenches of World War I, to the jungles of Africa, to New York and Detroit and finally to Paris. Throughout his journey, Bardamu keeps encountering his doppelganger Robinson. \r\n
\r\nBardamu was a studying to be a doctor and all of twenty-one years when he enlisted in the army. The story starts at the time of World War I. Bardamu experiences the horrors of war first-hand and gets disillusioned. He makes friends with Robinson at this time. After this period, he gets into short and unsuccessful relationships with two women, Lola and Musyne, before he leaves for Africa. Once in Africa, he is faced with the brutality of colonial life. An illness leads to him being shifted to the United States, where he finds employment at Ford and gets involved with a prostitute. He eventually returns to France as a doctor only to encounter daily greed, misery and death. He then goes on to join a troupe even as Robinson, who is now blind, meets a new woman Madelon. Bardamu finally ends up working in a psychiatric hospital, run by a doctor who loses his sanity. The books ends with Robinson’s murder at the hand of his mistress and the protagonist’s lonely state. \r\n
\r\nThe Journey attempts to look at in detail the wanderings of men condemned to the absurdity of life and human folly. The theme of the novel is dark and nihilistic. Celine used his writing to express his anger at the hypocrisy of society. His experiences led him to feel complete disgust with human folly, greed and the state-of-affairs in general; and these feelings find expression in his writing. Critics have stated that the triumph of the novel was in the tone of the narrative. Many authors had experimented with the same prior to this but it is Celine who managed to elevate sarcasm to an art form and create something sensational. It was a deliberate attempt to outshine the competition and it succeeded. More recently, with Celine’s reputation as an anti-Semite and Axis supporter coming to the fore, the legacy of the book has become controversial. It remains one of the most interesting works of the twentieth century because of its existentialist approach of man’s condition.\r\n