Louis-Ferdinand Céline // London Bridge

First American edition, published 21 years after the original French edition (“Le Pont de Londres”, 1964—the second volume of “Guignol’s Band”, originally published in 1944). The French edition itself was posthumous, like “Rigodon”, as Céline passed away in 1961. 

This book, once thought lost, was rediscovered by chance after Céline’s death. Here, we see the return of a young Bardamu, familiar from Journey to the End of the Night and Death on Credit. Wounded on the French front during World War I and sent to England, he finds himself immersed in a strange world of frenzied Frenchmen and eccentric Englishmen. 

Was the 21-year delay in publishing the American edition due to the complications surrounding the discovery of the manuscript after Céline’s death, his controversial past, the book’s setting in London’s underworld during the First World War, or simply the difficulty of capturing Céline’s singular style in translation (by Dominic Di Bernardi)? Most likely, it was a combination of all these factors. 

Book in perfect condition, as new. 

Of note is the publication of “Londres” by Gallimard in 2022, following the restitution of Céline’s lost manuscripts in 2021 (after “Guerre” and before “La Volonté du Roi Krogold”). This long-lost material resurfaced after the passing of his widow, Lucette Destouches, in late 2019. “Londres” is essentially a more complete—though still unfinished—version of the book Céline originally envisioned, stretching to 600 pages. 

The manuscripts disappeared under murky circumstances in 1944—circumstances Céline himself described, initially to the skepticism of some.