Castle to Castle

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Louis C?line, Ralph Manheim (Translator)

Overview

With an undercurrent of sensual excitement, Céline paints an almost unbearably vivid picture of society and the human condition. 

Castle to Castle is the often hilarious account of a baggage-train of highly-placed Nazis from the former German-occupied countries. As the allies advance, so were these important traitors moved from one château to another and then from schloss to schloss. Céline describes the tension, apprehension and bickering which dominated these men, fallen from power. This translation won a National Book Award.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564781505
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	03/01/1997
Series:	French Literature
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.53(w) x 8.01(h) x 0.94(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) was a French writer and doctor whose novels are anti-heroic visions of human suffering. Accused of collaboration with the Nazis, Celine fled France in 1944 first to Germany and then to Denmark. Condemned by default (1950) in France to one year of imprisonment and declared a national disgrace, Celine returned to France after his pardon in 1951, where he continued to write until his death. His classic books include Journey to the End of the Night, Death on the Installment Plan, London Bridge, North, Rigadoon, Conversations with Professor Y, Castle to Castle, and Normance.

Ralph Manheim (1907-1992) was an American translator of German and French literature. He is known for translating Mein Kempf  in Hitler's idiosyncratic, often grammatically aberrant style, as well as the works of Bertolt Brecht in collaboration with John Willett. The Pen/Ralph Manheim Medal for translation, inaugurated in his name, is a major lifetime achievement award in the field of translation. He himself won its predecessor, the PEN translation prize, in 1964. 

Editorial Reviews

"Castle to Castle [is] a literary event of the first order." —Newsweek 

"Castle to Castle proves how appallingly up to date its dead appalling author is. . . . Cline's style consists of outcries and exclamations, groans and curses, all in white heat, separated by dots which like machine-gun bullets mow down even the mitigating orderliness of grammar." —The Nation

 "Celine's mastery in creating one of the truly cathartic experiences of contemporary literature is indisputable." —Saturday Review

"Cline walks into great literature as other men walk into their own homes." —Atlantic Monthly

 "Cline's experiences have not mellowed him. Here, as in all his novels, . . . he hates everybody, regardless of race, creed or color. If anyone is singled out, it is his publishers, whose limousines, he says, grow even longer, while their authors, in rags, cling behind like pitiful hitchhikers. . . . the translation is a masterpiece." —The New York Times Book Review 

 "Céline is the genius of naturalism turning upon itself, disgusted with the universe, most of all disgusted with art. He is 'the inspired gravedigger of a decaying world,' a Zola in a nightmare of twentieth century stench, hate, rage, betrayals, hideous swansongs. His novels are autobiographical effusions of fact and hallucination, held together by an ebullient misanthropy, a profound disrespect for conventional ethics, and a totally uncompromising knowledge of fascist Europe in the Thirties and early Forties."—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

Published in English seven years after his death (LJ 11/15/68), this is considered one of Cline's darkest novels. It is also autobiographical. Like the author, the novel's central character is a Nazi collaborator who is nonetheless destroyed by them. This translation won a National Book Award.

Library Journal