Often comic and always angry, thefirst-person autobiographical narrator, with his wife and their cat intow, takes the reader with him on his flight from Paris to Denmark afterfinding himself on the losing side of World War II. The train ridesthat encompass the novel are filled with madness and mercy, as Céline, aphysician, aids refugees while ignoring his own medical needs.<p>Céline'sinventive style and black humor profoundly influenced many writers whocame after him, including Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac, WilliamBurroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski. As Kurt Vonnegut statesin his introduction to this edition, "[Céline] demonstrated that perhapshalf of all experience, the animal half, had been concealed by goodmanners. No honest writer or speaker will ever want to be polite again."</p>