London Bridge: Louis-Ferdinand Celine

A major work by one of France`s most important authors of the twentieth century, London Bridge is a riotous novel about the London underworld during the First World War.
Picking up where its predecessor Guignol`s Band left off, Celine`s narrator recounts his disastrous partnership with an eccentric Frenchman intent on financing a trip to Tibet by winning a gas-mask competition; his uneasy relationship with London`s pimps and whores and their common nemesis, Inspector Matthew of Scotland Yard; and, most scandalous of all, his affair with a colonel`s daughter.
Written in Celine`s trademark style - a headlong rush of slang, brusque observation and quirky lyricism, delivered in machine-gun bursts of prose and ellipses - London Bridge recreates the dark days during the Great War with sordid verisimilitude and desperate hilarity.