GenevaBookClub: Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the reading public in Europe. The story of the improbable yet convincingly described travels of the petit-bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I, to the African jungle, to New York and Detroit, and finally to life as a failed doctor in Paris, takes the readers by the scruff and hurtles them toward the novel's inevitable, sad conclusion.

GenevaBookClub: The book is presented as a manuscript, written by its protagonist, middle-aged Harry, which ends up being published by an acquaintance. It was partially inspired by Hesse’s diaries from the 1920s. It is part plot, part internal monologue of a person who feels divided against themselves: the civilized man and the lone steppe wolf. Set against the backdrop of early 20th century Europe (probably in Zurich, as some urban elements would indicate) it deals with atemporal human issues such as role in society, loneliness, despair at lack of realization of one’s dreams, sensual pleasures, intellectual pursuits, human drive for transcendence, being part of a tribe vs being an individual, the will to live and the despair to die. Has quite a few stylistic elements present, such as Jung’s symbolism, jazz references, bourgeois culture.