Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches, better known by the pen name
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was a French novelist, polemicist and physician. His first novel
Journey to the End of the Night (1932) won the
Prix Renaudot but divided critics due to the author's pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his writing style based on working class speech. In subsequent novels such as
Death on the Installment Plan (1936),
Guignol's Band (1944) and
Castle to Castle (1957) Céline further developed an innovative and distinctive literary style. Maurice Nadeau wrote: "What Joyce did for the English language…what the surrealists attempted to do for the French language, Céline achieved effortlessly and on a vast scale."