Told in the first person, the novel is based on the author's own experiences dur
ing the First World War, in French colonial Africa, in the USA - where he worked
for a while at the Ford factory in Detroit - and later as a young doctor in a w
orking-class suburb in Paris. Celine's disgust with human folly, malice, greed a
nd the chaotic state in which man has left society lies behind the bitterness th
at distinguishes his idiosyncratic, colloquial and visionary writing and gives i
t its force.
