In 2011, France pulled one of its greatest 20th-century novelists from an official list of cultural icons after public protests. This deep dive explores the turbulent life of Louis-Ferdinand Celine, a man who stands simultaneously as a giant of world literature and a national pariah. We report the historical facts of his extreme politics impartially, without endorsement.

We trace his journey from a self-taught, street-level childhood and heroic, scarring World War I service into medicine, his groundbreaking debut novel, and his descent into virulent anti-Semitic propaganda, collaboration, exile, and a fractured legacy.

• The trench trauma and chronic injuries that forged his worldview
• How his medical work among the poor fed his bleak vision of humanity
• Reinventing French prose with slang and his gasping little music
• His pacifist terror of war mutating into fascist collaboration
• His flight to Germany and Denmark, and the debate over his art and monstrousness