Fun, wild, fascinating book with a worthwhile Forward that discloses some history and context to this 1926 novel. As an example, the name of the author is not really the author's name. This is well worth your time. ( )

Sometimes you read a book that clearly has a little of everyone you’ve ever read before. This work easily brushes shoulders with the likes of Miller, Gide, Angela Carter, Bataille and James Hogg. Another great transgressive travel novel. ( )

Reading Moravagine, I was immediately reminded of Voltaire's [Candide]. However Moravagine is much much darker and if you read it with all the apparent seriousness in which it is written, not funny at all.

Blaise Cendrars was a Swiss naturalised French citizen; a poet and novelist who was influential in the European modernist movement. Moravagine was originally published in 1926, but republished in 1956 with an explanation by the author on how and perhaps why he wrote the novel. It is a dark ride through the human (male) psyche. Warning misogyne is rife.

The narrator is Raymond la Science who as a young man of medical science sees an opportunity to release the madman and murderer Moravagine from an asylum in order to carry out further study. Moravagine is a very rich, last in line member of a noble family. He shows early signs of instability and is kept secured on a large estate. As a young boy he is betrothed to Rita, but is only allowed to see her once a year. When she arrives as a late adolescent woman, Moravagine murders her and he spends ten years locked away in a small cell, He keeps some sanity by focusing on his situation. Released by Raymond they move to London, but have to leave after Moravagine commits a number of brutal murders on women. Thy travel to Russia where Moravagine and Raymond become involved with the revolutionaries in 1907. Moravagine with his fortune and his ability to organise others, soon becomes a leader of the abortive 1907 coup in June. They are forced to flee and take ship to America, On the ship they befriend an Orang-u-tang (yes it starts to enter a world slightly touched by magic realism). Travels in America lead them to adventures on the frontier and needing to escape again they end up stranded on the Amazon river, where Morvagine becomes a god-like figure to a primitive tribe of Indians. They finally make it back to Paris where Moravagine becomes a pilot in the first world war.

It is a book on which I have hardly formed much of an opinion. As an exercise in modernist literature it can be admired, but there were only two parts that really grabbed my attention. The first was Moravagine's method of keeping his sanity while being locked up for years and the second was Raymond's experience with the Amazon tribe where he is a virtual prisoner in conditions where most Europeans would find it difficult to survive. The dream like states that both characters achieve pointed to a consideration as whether Moragavine was just the darker side of Raymond. It is a book that might benefit from a second reading, but I am not sure I can be bothered and so three stars. ( )

A wonderfully bizarre book by the irreplaceable and often unreadable Cendrars, whose biography is at least as important as his works. ( )

A perfect "I'd rather talk about it than read it" book, which brings home to me once and for all how impossible it is to remain 'shocking' as history pro/regresses--like Celine, in that respect. And once the shockingness is gone, there's not a whole lot left to keep this thing together, unfortunately.

It does have, however, the greatest title in literature, and really, really does make a great conversation topic. We have our 'hero,' Moravagine, and his Robin, 'Dr. Science.' Voila: the two main twentieth century paths to amorality, the nihilistic and the scientistic. They travel the globe doing moderately shocking things. Moravagine causes the first Russian Revolution. He's a daring fighter pilot. He disembowels women.

More interesting by far is the apparatus Cendrars sets up around the picaresque: Moravagine's 'manuscripts,' the very hazy relationship between Blaise Cendrars and Dr. Science, Cendrars' reflections on writing the book. And some of the chapters are worth reading. "Our Rambles in America" is a kind of inverted "Education of Henry Adams," and the closing chapters (they take place after the world has, by creating the first world war, out moravagined Moravagine) are oddly moving. ( )