Le Sang Noir was based in Guilloux's memories of his philosophy tutor, Georges Palante, an anarchist thinker who eventually killed himself in 1925.

His youthful promise as a writer and thinker has long since evaporated, and his body is becoming disturbingly abnormal as his feet become excessively large due to an illness.

In the afternoon he consoles himself with drink.As the evening wears on he learns about disasters and local tragedies, deaths, robberies and betrayals which convince him of the irredeemable corruption of humanity.

The English-language version, published under the title Bitter Victory, was described by Time magazine as "one of the strongest French novels since Celine's Journey to the End of the Night... it has much in common with Celine's masterpiece in its mood of intense disgust, its savage satirical portraits, its hatred of hypocrisy and its wild, grotesque humor.

[4] Le Sang noir was made into a TV film in 2006, directed by Peter Kassovitz and produced by BFC productions (Françoise Castro) and France 3.

On 29 Nov 2014, an opera based on the novel, titled Das Schwarze Blut (Le Sang Noir), by French composer François Fayt was premiered, in German, at the Erfurt Theater.