London Bridge

A major work by one of Frances most important authors of the twentieth century, London Bridge is a riotous novel about the London underworld during the First World War. Picking up where its predecessor Guignols Band left off, Célines narrator recounts his disastrous partnership with an eccentric Frenchman intent on financing a trip to Tibet by winning a gas-mask competition; his uneasy relationship with Londons pimps and whores and their common nemesis, Inspector Matthew of Scotland Yard; and, most scandalous of all, his affair with a colonels daughter. Written in his trademark style a headlong rush of slang, brusque observation and quirky lyricism, delivered in machine-gun bursts of prose and ellipses Céline recreates the dark days during the Great War with sordid verisimilitude and desperate hilarity.