Long-lost novel by French Nazi collaborator hailed

A NOVEL by Louis-ferdinand Celine, one of France’s most celebrated but controversial literary figures, owing to his Nazi sympathies, is to be released today 78 years after it was written.

Despite his dark history, even before its release, Guerre (War) has enjoyed rave reviews with Le Monde calling it “a miracle” and Le Point hailing “the end of a mystery, the discovery of a great text”.

Celine remains a literary luminary in France despite the fact that he was one of France’s most enthusiastic Nazi collaborators.

Already celebrated because of his debut novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932) – which is still taught in schools – Celine became one of the most ardent anti-semitic propagandists even before France’s occupation.

In June 1944, with the Allies advancing on Paris, the writer was forced to abandon a pile of his manuscripts in his Montmartre apartment.

Celine expected punishment for having spent the war rubbing shoulders with the Gestapo, denouncing Jews and foreigners to the authorities and publishing racist pamphlets about Jewish world conspiracies. In the end, however, he was somehow reinstated.

For decades, no one knew what happened to his papers, and he angrily accused resistance fighters of burning them. But in the 2000s, they surfaced in the possession of Jean-pierre Thibaudat, a retired journalist, who passed them to Celine’s heirs last summer.

Praise for the author’s 150-page novel, published by Gallimard, has been unanimous, with Le Journal du Dimanche calling it “breathtaking”.

With an initial print run of 80,000, Gallimard expects a blockbuster. The work opens with 20-year-old Brigadier Ferdinand finding himself miraculously alive after waking up on a Belgian battlefield, and follows his treatment and hasty departure for England – all based on Celine’s real experiences.

The writer’s time across the Channel is the subject of another newly discovered novel, Londres, out this autumn.

While some critics insist it is essential to separate the author from the man, and that these new, early works show little anti-semitism, the debate over his legacy is expected to drag on.