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Translated from the French by Alan Brown
Blaise Cendrars’ last novel is an original and often
very funny portrayal of the Parisian criminal underworld of
the late 1940s that crackles with the fires of an abundant
imagination.
Yet To the End of the World is not total invention
as, like all Cendrars’ works, it has some basis in real
life.
The narrative races between a Foreign Legion barracks in North
Africa and the theatres, cafes, dosshouses and police headquarters
of post-war Paris. The central character in this roman à
clef is Thérèse, a septuagenarian actress who
was once the rival of Sarah Berhardt herself. Her passionate
affair with a young deserter from the Foreign Legion (in which
Cendrars himself served) is interrupted by the murder of a
barman and the impact this event has on all their lives.
With its bold and colourful supporting cast – a subterranean
gallery of ex-legionnaires, theatre types, black marketeers,
dubious aristocrats, sexual adventurers and freaks – entwined with numerous sub-plots and minor themes, To the
End of the World amounts to a grandly picaresque adventure.
When it appeared in France in 1956, it offered a ready antedote
to the sense of negativity and existential futility that pervaded
many novels of the era.
‘There is nothing like reading Cendrars’ – Independent
‘One of the most inventive and funny writers of the early
20th century’ – Kathy Acker
‘Zola in overdrive, chaos worthy of Bulgakov . . . Blaise
Cendrars is one of Europe’s most original comic experimentalists.’ – Irish
Times
‘A good introduction to the culter-than-cult writer.’ – Uncut
‘It is typically paradoxical that in his last great
novel Cendrars, who in all his previous works had celebrated
the dominant, ruthless, adventurous male, should finally
come around to producing a book with a heroine. And what
a heroine!’ – Times Literary Supplement
BLAISE CENDRARS was born Fréderic Sauser in 1887 of
mixed Swiss and Scottish descent. A legendary adventurer,
his life in Moscow, Peking, New York and Paris inspired his
brilliant, action-packed narratives. The author of more than
twenty books, his works have been translated into eleven languages
(including Braille). A founder of the modern movement in literature,
he inspired poets from John Dos Passos to Patti Smith. He
died in Paris in 1961. |
