Journey to the End of the Night

Céline's night belongs to the poor northern edge of Paris: the boulevards around Place de Clichy and the grey working-class banlieue just over the old city wall, where a disillusioned doctor treats patients who cannot pay. Bardamu wanders far first, through the trenches, a French African colony and Ford's Detroit, but the book keeps returning to this rim of the city and ends there. The map anchors that Paris and the suburb of Clichy behind it; the overseas detours are marked as excursions beyond the setting.

Ferdinand Bardamu

Place de Clichy

Opening

The book opens on a café terrace here, where a stray argument about patriotism sends the young narrator off to enlist almost on a whim. It is the one moment of careless city life before the war, and Céline pins it to a real Paris crossroads on the northern boulevards, a short walk from the poorer world the story will settle into.

Opening pages

explicit The novel names Place de Clichy at the outset; this marks the real square where its five boulevards meet.

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