Ce récit à forte saveur autobiographique couvre les derniers mois de l'occupation allemande en France et la détention de Céline au Danemark. Volcanique, éructant, funèbre. Gouaille et plaintes. Publié en 1952. Une oeuvre peut-être moins marquante que ##Nord## ou ##D'un château l'autre##. Préface, p. 7-16.

Céline eating shit, squirming like a worm in a frying pan, raving like a lunatic. He pleads, he snivels, he begs, he yells, he wants to makes us see that he, HE, has suffered, just like, EXACTLY like the victims of German lagers--he's lost 45 kilos, ladies and gentlemen!--45 kilos!--he has pellagra! pellagra!--he is being tortured and crucified! the mutilated invalid of the Great War! the "traitor"! What, he asks, has he betrayed? He asks sincerely. He never saw any difference between himself and the others, except that they were on the winning side. He imagines nostalgic scenarios in which he too had picked the (eventually) winning side, like a drunk winning a lottery in his head. The entire war boils down for this monstrous egoist to a personal kick in the pants.

The great hater loved his own ass well enough to bother running away from France, first to the crumbling Naziland, then north, ever farther north, till he hit the safety of a Danish prison (the Danes refused to extradite him to France...) But how could even someone like Laval engage this idiot to be his personal doctor? How desperate they must have been, how perfectly deliciously sweatingly clawingly desperate. Oh yes, quick death was too good for the likes of him. I'm glad the turd lived to hurt as long as he did. ( )