""Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened.""
Dr. Max Aue, the man at the heart of Jonathan Littell's stunning
and controversial novel The Kindly Ones, personifies the evils of
the Second World War and the Holocaust. Highly educated and
cultured, he was an ambitious SS officer, a Nazi and mass murderer
who was in the upper echelons of the Third Reich. He tells us of
his experience during the war. He was present at Auschwitz and Babi
Yar, witnessed the battle of Stalingrad, and survived the fall of
Berlin -- receiving a medal from Hitler personally in the last days
of Nazi Germany.
Long after the war, he is living a comfortable bourgeois life in
France, married with two children, managing a lace factory. And
now, having evaded justice, he speaks out, giving a precise and
accurate record of his life. The tone of his account is detached,
lapidary, and for the most part unrepentant, whether he is
describing his participation in mass murder on the Eastern Front,
his bureaucratic investigations of labour productivity in the death
camps, his casual murder of civilians as he tries to break through
Russian lines towards the end of the war, or his fervid and
convoluted relationship with his twin sister.
Over its course, by entwining Aue's life with those of historical
figures such as Eichmann and Speer, Himmler and indeed Hitler, The
Kindly Ones" "comes to depict the entire architecture of Nazism --
from its grandest intellectual pretensions to its most minute, most
chilling managerial details and executions. The Kindly Ones"
"presents -- with unprecedented realism, meticulous research that
is both fascinating and compelling, and brilliant literary
accomplishment -- the greatest horrors imaginable.
"War and murder are a question, a question without an answer, for
when you cry out in the night, no one answers," Aue says. In the
same way, this powerfully affecting, powerfully challenging book
confronts the reader with the most profound questions about
history, morality, and art without offering any easy resolution.
Written originally in French, and published now in English for the
first time, The Kindly Ones has already sold to date well over a
million copies in Europe. In France it won two prestigious prizes,
including the Goncourt, and has been compared to War and Peace and
other great classics of literature.
"From the Hardcover edition."
General
Imprint: |
Vintage
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Release date: |
March 2010 |
First published: |
February 2010 |
Authors: |
Jonathan Littell
|
Dimensions: |
198 x 131 x 43mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - B-format
|
Pages: |
983 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-09-951314-8 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
General & literary fiction >
Modern fiction
|
LSN: |
0-09-951314-5 |
Barcode: |
9780099513148 |
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