"War." Missing account of Frenchman Celine stirs controversy ahead of release

 "War." Missing account of Frenchman Celine stirs controversy ahead of release

A missing novel by French writer Louis Ferdinand Celine sparked widespread controversy even before it may 5 release in France, where it was seen as a miracle and an artistic masterpiece since its creation by novelist Celine, French newspaper Le Monde reported.

Le Monde revealed that the unpublished novel, entitled "War", is a collection of rare manuscripts and memoirs of the French writer and came in 250 pages, and includes a novel set in the Belgian province of Flinders during the Great War, adding that it is a first draft dealing with World War I and remained missing for decades before it was found 15 years ago, according to the publishing house Gallimard.

The French newspaper quoted Gallimard as saying that "Celine Rauh in the novel "War" between biography and fiction, based on the central experience of his life, the physical and moral trauma that afflicted him during the war.

Novelist and doctor Louis Ferdinand Celine was 20 years old when World War I broke out and had a major impact throughout his life, reflecting on his writings, describing the war as "an international slaughterhouse in a state of madness," reflected in a chapter of the novel in which he said, "I have always slept like this amid the terrible noise since December 1914, I held the war in my head, it's trapped in my head."

The same sources said that Celine left the draft novel among a large collection of his manuscripts and papers when he left Paris for Germany in 1944, before his house was robbed, but about 75 years later, specifically in 2020, a French journalist informed the author's heirs that he had kept manuscripts for 15 years.

Le Monde described the war novel as "a miracle, war, the novel of Louis Ferdinand Celine (1894-1961) to be published in 192 pages, nearly 90 years after it was written, it deserves to find a place in libraries, between a journey to the end of the night (1932) and death by religion (1936), pre-war masterpieces written by the French novelist."

"War is just the bottom of the stairs, on the contrary, it is a central piece in the enormous literary puzzle that Celine has formulated with great concern throughout his life," says Emile Bramy, author of Celine's autobiography.

"It will certainly impress readers, and Gallimard has decided to print 80,000 copies in its first edition, a figure that reveals the literary, historical and artistic importance of the novel."