Death on the Installment Plan

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine · 1971

Death on the Installment Plan (original French title Mort à crédit) is Louis‑Ferdinand Céline’s 1936 novel that serves as a companion and loose prequel to Journey to the End of the Night. Written in Céline’s famously abrasive, confessional style, the work follows the narrator‑doctor Ferdinand Bardamu as he drifts through memories of a harsh Parisian childhood, World War I service, and a series of bleak, often comic, encounters with poverty, illness, and sexual excess. The novel shocked contemporary readers with its raw invective, dark humor and fragmented, stream‑of‑consciousness narrative, establishing Céline as a revolutionary voice in modernist literature.