Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches, better known by the pen name Louis-Ferdinand Céline, was a French novelist, polemicist, and physician. His groundbreaking first novel, Journey to the End of the Night (1932), won the Prix Renaudot but also stirred controversy due to the author's pessimistic view of the human condition and his innovative writing style, rooted in working-class speech. Céline continued to refine his distinct literary technique in subsequent novels such as Death on the Installment Plan (1936), Guignol's Band (1944), and Castle to Castle (1957).

Maurice Nadeau praised Céline for achieving "effortlessly and on a vast scale" what James Joyce did for the English language and the surrealists for French. From 1937, Céline authored a series of antisemitic polemics advocating a military alliance with Nazi Germany. During the German occupation of France, he openly maintained his antisemitic stance, and after the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944, he fled to Germany and then Denmark, living in exile. Convicted of collaboration in 1951 by a French court, he was soon pardoned by a military tribunal and returned to France to continue his dual careers as a doctor and author.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest French novelists of the 20th century, Céline remains a controversial figure in France due to his antisemitism and wartime activities.