Author and physician Louis-Ferdinand Celine was born on May 27, 1894, in Courbevoie, a suburb west of Paris, France. He passed away on July 1, 1961.
In 1912, at the age of 18, he volunteered to join the army but was discharged the following year. In 1922, he transferred to the University of Paris's Faculty of Medicine and earned his doctorate in 1924. In 1932, he published his debut novel, "Journey to the End of the Night," which depicts a protagonist wandering in helplessness and fatigue after the devastation of the war, and he quickly became a literary darling. This work and his "early trilogy," "Death by Force," "War," and "Guignol's Band," attracted attention for their radical content and unconventional writing style, incorporating vulgar language and slang. Although he was considered a left-wing writer at the time of his debut, around the time of World War II he began to write anti-Semitic essays and political pamphlets, including "Smash the Insects," "The Corpse Party," and "The Predicament." As a result, an arrest warrant was issued after the war, and he fled to Denmark in 1944. The following year, he was detained in Copenhagen at the request of the French government, and in 1950 was convicted of collaborating with Germany during World War II. In 1951, he was pardoned for his military service during World War II and returned to Germany. His subsequent "late trilogy," consisting of "From Castle to Castle," "North," and "Rigodon," which mix fact and fiction to depict life during his time in exile, is also fascinating in providing insight into the situation in Germany just before defeat. He suffered a stroke shortly after completing "Rigodon" in 1961, and died that July.