Guerre was first published in French in May 2022, followed in October the same year by London Bridge, a much longer fragment based on Céline’s time spent as a clerk in the French passport office in London. War is a short book compared to Céline’s other works, and it might serve as a brief introduction to his ideas and style for the uninitiated or as a literary curiosity to those who know him. The publication of fragmentary works, under the banner of ‘literary curiosity’, is itself a curious phenomenon which War only vaguely satisfies. Of course, this has nothing to do with Céline, who apparently dismissed the fragments as ‘a few rough drafts’. While true to an extent, this undersells their literary merit. Literary curiosity extends only so far: plans by French publishing house Gallimard to republish Céline’s anti-Semitic works were scrapped in 2018 amid a public backlash. There is no overt anti-Semitism in War, which dates to around the time of Céline’s earliest works, particularly his masterpiece Journey to the End of the Night (1932), to which these pages could easily belong.

The novel begins in medias res, for the first half of the book was lost. This doesn’t make a lot of difference: all of Céline’s novels begin this way, with little context or preamble. It follows the adventures of Ferdinand, Céline’s delirious alter ego, a corporal in the French army who, after deserting with his regiment’s coffers, is mistakenly awarded a medal for valour. As with Journey, War is based on Céline’s experience during World War I and his wounding at Ypres in West Flanders. Most of the book is set in the military hospital and streets and bars of Hazebrouck, a French but culturally Belgian town, which Céline renames Peurdu-sur-la-Lys, which might loosely be translated as ‘fear/lost among the lilies’. It is a classic Célinian juxtaposition, as is the idea of birds ‘whistling like bullets’, which captures the lasting trauma of warfare, both physical and psychological. The narrative – if you can call it that – is full of the type of modernist allegory readers of Céline will be familiar with: the ‘endless detours to end up in the same place’, a belltower which ‘is as good a destination as any’, and the idea, central to Céline’s philosophy, that ‘[f]rom a certain point onward, life becomes a load of bollocks’.

John Banville suggests, in his review of the book, that there is enough in War to make it more than just a curiosity and this is true to an extent. The strength – and this is something War shares with Céline’s early masterpieces, Journey and Death on Credit (1936) – is the unravelling of the self as a narrative construct, that ‘whole person you get given and stick up for’. Céline’s narratives unfold in the space between dream or hallucination, and what can only loosely be called ‘reality’. While Marcel Proust, the other side of the coin of French modernism, was busy piecing the self together from its fragmentary remains, Céline was content to see it in ruins, much like the cities and landscapes he wanders through.

Style may be the reason one rereads Céline; his prose (his ‘music’ as he called it), is unique in the history of literature, and his ability as a wordsmith has been compared to that of James Joyce, even if his use of language makes Ulysses seem like high tea. Racism and sexism aside – and this is a lot to set aside – Céline often writes with brilliant humour and is capable of great pathos, almost in spite of himself. His ability to construct striking and visceral imagery is possibly unmatched – perhaps Henry Miller, who includes Céline among his influences, comes closest. Take for example the soldier lying next to Ferdinand on the battlefield ‘split open like a pomegranate’. It is difficult to think of a pomegranate in the same way once you have read this.

War was written in the patois Céline adopted as his signature style which, as translator Sander Berg points out in his introduction, presents certain difficulties for the translator. I am not convinced these difficulties are solved here, although it does improve slightly on translations of Céline’s earlier works in its ability to reproduce some of the more vulgar turns of phrase. The choice, however, to transform Ferdinand into an English ‘lad’ creates a few issues, least of all in his frequent encounters with the English army. Choices like ‘geezer’, ‘bint’ (woman), and ‘porky pies’ (lies) feel imposed rather than natural. The sometimes puzzling blend of English dialects renders Ferdinand part Artful Dodger, part Alex from A Clockwork Orange – both not unreasonable comparisons, except for Ferdinand’s distaste for violence of any kind.

Céline/Ferdinand describes the goal of his writing in War thus: to ‘create beautiful literature with little bits of horror’. War is closer to burlesque than horror, with the reader more likely to cringe than to gasp. As for beauty, that depends on Ferdinand, who is likely to see more beauty in the green and rotting teeth of an obliging nurse than in the woods and fields surrounding the town.

Times critic Adam Sage called the discovery of Céline’s lost manuscripts the most important and the most troubling literary discovery of the last century. What they confirm is something already known to those who still read Céline: we need more writing like his ... and less.