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The language of the working class soldier
MARTIN HALL steps gingerly through a fragmentary novel about WWI by one of France’s greatest prose stylists, and most notorious fascist sympathisers
TRENCH HUMOUR: World War I soldiers of 3rd Battalion, New Zealand Rifle Brigade, reading jokes from the publication "NZ at the Front" in muddy conditions at "Clapham Junction" in the Ypres Salient, Belgium. 20 November 1917  [Henry Armytage Sanders/CC]

War
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, translated by Sander Berg, Alma Classics, £14.99

 

A NEWLY discovered novel by one of France’s most celebrated writers is not a common occurrence. When that writer is Louis-Ferdinand Celine, anti-semite, collaborator and friend of fascists, there may be some readers who would prefer that it had been left lost.

However, War, written in 1934 but only discovered in 2021, is very much worth your time. 

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