Before you is the first edition in Russian of the novel “North” by a classic of French literature, one of the most eccentric writers of the 20th century, L.-F. Selina (1894–1961). Like all the author’s other books, they are autobiographical. Four people wander through war-scorched Europe: Celine himself, his wife Lily, friend Le Vigan and the cat Beber, who became the most famous cat in French literature. These are the main characters, all the rest are episodic characters: generals without armies, heads of bombed stations, residents of destroyed German cities and villages, refugees, children lost by their parents, animals, a huge and mournful procession of the living and the dead, and all of them - together with Celine - witnesses of the Apocalypse, where the writer, as he admits, “is the chronicler of the performances of the World Guignol Theater.”