A novel in which the doctor Ferdinand looks back on his childhood and youth in Paris before the First World War. He grows up in a cramped household of struggling shopkeepers, where money worries and family rows are constant. Apprenticeships and odd jobs follow, including a long stretch with an eccentric inventor and publisher. The book mixes harsh comedy, anger and tenderness, and uses broken, exclamatory sentences that imitate speech. It is often read as a companion to Voyage au bout de la nuit, going back to the narrator's early years.