North

New York: Delacorte Press, 1972. Red printed wrappers, a bit sunned, otherwise an excellent copy. Uncorrected proof copy of the first American edition, translated by Ralph Manheim. Céline’s third novel offers a vivid chronicle of a desperate man’s frantic flight from France in the final months of World War II. Accompanied by his wife, their cat, and an actor friend, the narrator leaves Paris for Baden-Baden (a World War II hideaway for wealthy Germans), is then sent to a bombed-out Berlin, and finally leaves for Denmark in search of the gold he had stashed there prior to the war. This autobiographical novel captures the chaos of war and the toll it plays on men with documentary realism.