Louis-Ferdinand Céline Mea Culpa First Edition 1937 in Jacket

Description

Céline’s Mea Culpa is one of the most politically charged and historically revealing works in his early career. Written after his 1936 visit to the Soviet Union, it captures his sharp, volatile disillusionment with Stalinism and revolutionary romanticism. Bound here with his study of Ignaz Semmelweis — the tragic Hungarian physician who championed antiseptic procedures before germ theory was accepted — the volume reveals Céline at the intersection of medicine, politics, and polemic.

This 1937 American edition appears in the shadow of Journey to the End of the Night and just before Céline’s most notorious pamphlets. The Leon Trotsky endorsement printed on the rear dust jacket adds a striking layer of historical irony given Céline’s later trajectory. A pre-war American issue in jacket, increasingly difficult to locate intact.

A sharp pre-war Céline first in its original jacket — the kind collectors look for.