Les Bienveillantes
Encyclopedia
The Kindly Ones is a historical novel written in French
by American
-born author Jonathan Littell
. The 900-page book became a bestseller in France and was widely discussed in newspapers, magazines, academic journals, books and seminars. It was also awarded two of the most prestigious French
literary awards, the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française
and the Prix Goncourt
in 2006. As of December 2009 it has been translated into seventeen languages.
The book is narrated by protagonist Maximilien Aue, a former SS
officer of French
and German ancestry who helps carry out massacres during the Holocaust
, but in the end flees from Germany
to start a new life in northern France
. Aue is present during several of the major events of World War II
.
The title Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones) refers to the trilogy of ancient Greek tragedies, The Oresteia
written by Aeschylus
. The Erinyes
or Furies were vengeful goddesses who tracked and tormented those who murdered a parent. In the plays, Orestes
, who has killed his mother Clytemnestra
to avenge his father Agamemnon
, was pursued by these female goddesses. The goddess Athena
intervenes setting up a jury trial to judge the case of the Furies against Orestes. Athena gives the casting vote which acquits Orestes, then pleads with the Furies to accept the trial's verdict and to transform themselves into "Most loved of gods, with me to show and share fair mercy, gratitude and grace as fair." The Furies accept and are renamed the Eumenides
or Kindly Ones (in French Les Bienveillantes).
When asked why he wrote such a book, Littell evokes a photo he discovered in 1989 of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
, a Soviet partisan
hanged by the Nazis
in 1941. At the time he had a pharaonic project of writing a 10-volume book, which he gave up after writing the first three. The seeds of The Kindly Ones are to be found in the future fourth volume. He adds that a bit later, in 1992, he watched the movie Shoah
by Claude Lanzmann
, which left an impression on him, especially the discussion by Raul Hilberg
about the bureaucratic
aspect of the genocide
process.
In 2001, Littell decided to quit his job at Action Against Hunger
and started research which lasted 18 months, during which he went to Germany
, Caucasus
, Ukraine
, Russia
and Poland
, and read around 200 books, mainly about Nazi Germany
, the Eastern Front
, the Nuremberg Trials
and the genocide process. In addition, the author studied the literature and film archives of World War II
and the post-war trials. Littell worked on this novel for about five years. This book is his first novel written in French
; he published an earlier science fiction
book called Bad Voltage in 1989.
Littell said he wanted to focus on the thinking of an executioner and of origins of state murder
, showing how we can take decisions that lead, or not, to a genocide
. Littell claims he set out creating the character Max Aue by imagining what he would have done and how he would have behaved if he had been born into Nazi Germany. One childhood event that kept Littell interested in the question of the killer was the Vietnam War
. According to him, "My childhood terror was that I would be drafted
and sent to Vietnam and made to kill women and children who hadn't done anything to me."
and parricide
, Littell makes it clear that he was influenced by more than the structure of The Oresteia. He found that the idea of morality in Ancient Greece
is more relevant for making judgments about responsibility for the Holocaust than the Judeo-Christian
approach, where the idea of sin
can be blurred by the concepts such as intentional sin, unintentional sin, sinning by thought or sinning by deed. For the Greeks it was the commission of the act itself upon which one is judged: Oedipus
is guilty of patricide
, even if he did not know that he was killing his father.
, but most of the time he feels more an observer than a direct participant.
Aue starts the war as a member of an Einsatzgruppe in Ukraine
, during which he participates in the Babi Yar
massacre. He is then sent to the Battle of Stalingrad
, but survives. After a convalescence period in Berlin
and a visit to France, he is designated for a managerial role for the concentration camps
and visits both Auschwitz
and Belzec
extermination camps. He is present during the Battle of Berlin
, Nazi Germany
's last stand. By the end of the story, he leaves Germany unscathed. Throughout the book Aue meets several famous Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann
, Heinrich Himmler
and Adolf Hitler
.
The book is divided into seven chapters, each one with the name of a baroque dance
, following the sequence of a Bach Suite
. The narrative of each chapter is influenced by the rhythm of each dance.
« Toccata
»: In this introduction, we are introduced to the narrator and discover how he has ended up in France after the war. He is the director of a lace factory, has a wife, children and grandchildren, though he has no real affection for his family and continues his homosexual
encounters when he travels on business. He hints of an incest
uous love which we learn later was for his twin sister. He explains that he has decided to write about his experiences during the war for his own benefit and not as an attempt to justify himself, even though he insists that it took all kinds of men, good and bad, to make up the SS. He closes the introduction by saying, "I live, I do what is possible, it is the same for everyone, I am a man like the others, I am a man like you. Come along, I tell you, I am like you."
« Allemande I & II
»: Aue describes his life as a member of one of the Einsatzgruppen
death squad
s in Ukraine, particularly in the Crimea
and in the Caucasus. He describes in detail the open air massacres of Jews and Bolshevik
s behind the front lines (one of the massacres described is the Babi Yar Massacre in Kiev, 1941). Although he seems to become increasingly indifferent to the atrocities he is witnessing, he begins to experience daily bouts of vomiting and suffers a mental breakdown
. After taking sick leave, he returns to his unit to discover that a hostile superior officer has arranged that he be transferred to the front line at Stalingrad
in 1942.
« Courante
» : Aue thus takes part in the last days of the battle of Stalingrad
. As with the massacres, he is the soldier observer, the narrator rather than the combatant. In the midst of the chaos, violence and starvation, he manages to have a discussion with a Russian political commissar
POW about the similarities between the Nazi and the Bolshevik world views and once again is able to indicate his intellectual support for Nazi ideas. He is seriously wounded in the head and is miraculously evacuated just before the German surrender in February 1943.
« Sarabande
»: Convalescing in Berlin
, Aue is awarded the Iron Cross
1st Class by Heinrich Himmler
himself for his heroic action at Stalingrad. While still on sick leave, he decides to visit his mother and stepfather in Antibes
, in Italian
-occupied France. Apparently, while he is in a deep sleep, his mother and stepfather are brutally murdered. Max flees from the house without notifying anybody and returns to Berlin.
« Menuet en rondeaux
»: Aue is transferred to the Federal Ministry of the Interior
headed by Himmler where he plays a managerial role for the concentration camps
. He struggles to improve the living conditions of those prisoners, selected to work in the factories as slave laborers, in order to improve their productivity. The reader meets top Nazi bureaucrats organizing the implentation of the Final Solution
(i.e. Adolf Eichmann
, Rudolf Höß
, Himmler) and is given a glimpse of extermination camps (i.e. Auschwitz
, Belzec
); he also spends some time in Budapest
just when preparations are being made for transporting Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz
. The reader witnesses the tug-of-war between those who are concerned with war production (Albert Speer
) and those who are doggedly trying to implement the Final Solution. It is during this period that two SS police officers from the Kripo
who are investigating the murders of his mother and stepfather begin to visit him regularly. Like the Furies, they hound and torment him with their questions which indicate their suspicions about his role in the crime.
« Air
»: Max visits his sister and brother-in-law's empty house in Pomerania
. There, he engages in a veritable autoerotic
orgy particularly fueled by fantasy images of his twin sister. The two SS police officers follow his trail to the house, but he manages to hide from them.
« Gigue
»: Max travels back to Berlin through enemy Soviet lines with his friend Thomas, who has come to rescue him. Thomas is trying to pass off as a French laborer, knowing that his high SS rank is sure to get him killed if he is caught by Soviet forces. In Berlin, Max and Thomas find many of their colleagues preparing for escape in the chaos of the last days of the Third Reich. Aue meets and is decorated by Hitler in the Führerbunker
. During the decoration ceremony, Aue inexplicably bites Hitler's nose, drawing blood and the wrath of Hitler's men, yet he manages to escape through the Berlin U-Bahn
subway tunnels, only to encounter his police pursuers again. Though their case has been repeatedly thrown out of court, they're unwilling to accept defeat and prepare to execute him. Barely escaping their clutches when the Russians storm the tunnels and kill one of the policemen, Aue wanders aimlessly for a while in the streets of war-torn Berlin
before deciding to make a break for it. Making his way through the heavily shelled Berlin Zoo, he's yet again faced by the surviving policeman. However, his friend Thomas kills the last policeman only to himself be killed by Aue, who steals from him the papers and uniform of a French
conscripted worker
. We know from the beginning of the book that Aue's multilingualism
will allow him to escape back to France with a new identity as a returning Frenchman. The fact that he has managed to survive so many close calls and to escape successfully leads him to end the book with the statement: "The Kindly Ones were on to me."
But in the end, all is not explicitly laid out for the reader; for Littell, in the words of one reviewer, "excels in the unsaid."
s.
Maximilen Aue's mother was French (from Alsace
), while his father, who left his mother and disappeared from their life in 1921, was German. Aue's mother remarried a Frenchman, Aristide Moreau, which Maximilien highly disapproved of. After a childhood in Germany and an adolescence in France, where he attends Sciences-Po
, he goes to a German university in order to study law
. It is also during this period where he joins the SS.
Aue is a cultured, highly educated, classical music
-loving intellectual. He speaks many languages fluently — German
, French, Ancient Greek and Latin
— and holds a doctorate in law. Despite his French heritage and upbringing, he is, like his father, an ardent German Nationalist that fanatically believes in Nazi ideology, especially in the Final Solution. Even after the war, he is unrepentant of the crimes against humanity he committed in the name of the Nazis. He is extremely attracted to his twin sister Una which led to an incest
uous relationship with her when they were children, but ended when they entered puberty
. Refusing to truly love any woman other than Una, he becomes a homosexual but continues to fantasize having sex with Una.
Una Aue is Maximilien's twin sister. She is married to the aristocrat Berndt von Üxküll, and although she appears only briefly in person, she dominates Aue's imagination, particularly with his sexual fantasies
and hallucinations. She lived with her husband on his estate in Pomerania
, but apparently moved to Switzerland
with him towards the end of the war. Like her husband, she is critical of Germany's National Socialist regime which that, along with his hatred of their mother and stepfather, and his attraction to her, led to her being estranged from Aue following the war.
Berndt Von Üxküll
Berndt Von Üxkül is a paraplegic
junker
from Pomerania and married to Una. A World War I
veteran, he fought alongside Aue's father in the Freikorps
, describing him as a sadist
. He is a composer
. Despite essentially agreeing with their nationalist and anti-Semitic ideology, he dislikes and thus distances himself from the Nazis. His name is probably a reference to Nikolaus Graf von Üxküll-Gyllenband
, an anti-Nazi resistant and uncle of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
.
Héloïse Aue (Héloïse Moreau)
Max's mother, who, believing her first husband to be dead, remarried Aristide Moreau. Max does not accept that his father is dead and never forgives his mother for remarrying. Héloïse also disapproves of Max joining the Nazis, which further strains their relationship.
Aristide Moreau
Max's stepfather who is apparently connected to the French Resistance
. Moreau is also the name of the "hero" from Gustave Flaubert
's Sentimental Education
, a book that Aue reads later in the novel. 'Aristide' is reminiscent in French of Atrides, the name given to the descendants of Atreus
(one of his sons is Agamemnon, who is present in The Oresteia).
The twins, Tristan and Orlando
Mysterious twin children who live with the Moreaus, but are most likely the offspring of the incestuous relationship between Aue and his sister. The epic poem Orlando Furioso
is marked by the themes of love and madness, while the legend of Tristan and Iseult
tells the story of an impossible love, two themes that can be found in The Kindly Ones.
Thomas is Max's closest friend and the only person who appears in one capacity or another wherever he is posted. A highly educated, multilingual SS officer like Max, he is Aue's main source of information about bureaucratic
Nazi politics. He helps Max in a number of ways, both in advancing his career as well as rescuing him from his sister's house in Pomerania. He saves Max's life at the end of the novel.
Hélène Anders née Winnefeld
A young widow whom Aue meets through Thomas while working in Berlin. When Max becomes seriously ill, she voluntarily comes to his apartment and nurses him back to health. While she is attracted to him, as he initially expresses interest in her, due to his feelings for his sister, as well as his homosexual tendencies, he coldly turns her down and away. She leaves Berlin for her parents' house and writes asking if he intends to marry her. She does not appear again in the novel. In the Greek mythology
, Helen marries Menelaus
, brother of Agamemnon.
Dr. Mandelbrod
The mysterious Dr. Mandelbrod plays an important role behind the scenes as Aue's protector and promoter with high NSDAP connections, particular with Himmler. He was an admirer of Max's father and grandfather. At the end of the book he is seen packing his bags to join the enemy, offering his services to the Soviets
.
SS police officers Weser and Clemens
A pair of Kriminalpolizei
detectives who are in charge of the investigation into the murders of Aue's mother and her husband, they question and pursue Aue as if he were a prime murder suspect throughout the war despite the case being repeatedly thrown out. They play the role of the Erinyes
in the novel.
Dr. Hohenegg
Aue's friend, a doctor interested in nutrition
as well as the condition of soldiers and prisoners in concentration camps. Aue meets him in Ukraine during the Nazi offensive against the Soviet Union. They both take part in battle of Stalingrad and successfully escape before the German surrender. They reunite in Berlin, with Hohenegg revealing to Max how he saved his life by convincing doctors at Stalingrad to operate on him and transport him back to Germany, rather than leaving him for dead. He is depicted at different points in the book. He is partially based on Ernst-Günther Schenck
, a German physician and Standartenführer
.
and Prix Goncourt
), Les Bienveillantes was generally favourably reviewed in the French literary press. Le Figaro
proclaimed Littell as "man of the year" and the weekly Le Point
stated that the book “exploded onto the dreary plain of the literary autumn like a meteor.” The editor of the Nouvel Observateurs literary section called it "a great book." Even though Claude Lanzmann
had mixed feelings about the book, he said that "Littell is very talented (...) I am familiar with his subject, and above all I was astounded by the absolute accuracy of the novel. Everything is correct." Pierre Nora
called it "...an extraordinary literary and historical phenomenon..."
Initially, Littell thought that his book would sell around three to five thousand copies. Éditions Gallimard
, his publishing house, was more optimistic and decided to print 12,000 copies. Word of mouth and the enthusiastic reviews soon catapulted sales to such an extent that Gallimard had to stop publishing the latest Harry Potter
novel in order to meet the demand for The Kindly Ones, which ended up selling more than 700,000 copies in France by the end of 2007.
, there was widespread debate in Germany, during which Littell was accused of being "a pornographer of violence." Some criticised it from a historical perspective: one historian called the novel a “strange, monstrous book” that was "full of errors and anachronisms over wartime German culture".
in early 2009, The Kindly Ones received mixed reviews. Michiko Kakutani
, the principal book critic of The New York Times
, called the novel "[w]illfully sensationalistic and deliberately repellent", and went on to question the "perversity" of the French literary establishment for praising the novel. In a reply to Kakutani, Michael Korda
says that "You want to read about Hell
, here it is. If you don’t have the strength to read it, tough shit. It’s a dreadful, compelling, brilliantly researched, and imagined masterpiece, a terrifying literary achievement, and perhaps the first work of fiction to come out of the Holocaust that places us in its very heart, and keeps us there." The British
historian Antony Beevor
, reviewing it in The Times
, called it "a great work of literary fiction, to which readers and scholars will turn for decades to come," and listed The Kindly Ones as one of the top five fictional books about World War II. Harvard English
Professor Leland de la Durantaye writes that "the meticulously realistic main plot of The Kindly Ones is brilliantly organized and written". And The Observer
's Paris correspondent, Jason Burke
, praises the book, writing that "The Kindly Ones also owes its success to its quality as a work of fiction. Notwithstanding the controversial subject matter, this is an extraordinarily powerful novel". The Spectator
s literary reviewer, Anita Brookner
, based on her reading of the novel in the original French, describes the book as a "masterly novel...diabolically (and I use the word advisedly) clever. It is also impressive, not merely as an act of impersonation but perhaps above all for the fiendish diligence with which it is carried out...presuppose(s) formidable research on the part of the author, who is American, educated in France and writing fluent, idiomatic and purposeful French. This tour de force, which not everyone will welcome, outclasses all other fictions and will continue to do so for some time to come. No summary can do it justice".
Sales in the United States
were considered extremely low. The book was bought by HarperCollins
for a rumored $1 million, and the first printing consisted of 150,000 copies. According to Nielsen BookScan
— which captures around 70 percent of total sales – by the end of July 2009 only 17,000 copies were sold.
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-born author Jonathan Littell
Jonathan Littell
Jonathan Littell is a bilingual writer living in Barcelona. He grew up in France and United States and is a dual citizen of both countries. After acquiring his bachelor degree he worked for a humanitarian organisation for nine years, leaving his job in 2001 in order to concentrate on writing...
. The 900-page book became a bestseller in France and was widely discussed in newspapers, magazines, academic journals, books and seminars. It was also awarded two of the most prestigious French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
literary awards, the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française
Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française
Le Grand Prix du Roman is a French literary award, created in 1918, and given each year by the Académie française. Along with the Prix Goncourt, it is one of the oldest and most prestigious literary awards in France...
and the Prix Goncourt
Prix Goncourt
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
in 2006. As of December 2009 it has been translated into seventeen languages.
The book is narrated by protagonist Maximilien Aue, a former SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
officer of French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
and German ancestry who helps carry out massacres during the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
, but in the end flees from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
to start a new life in northern France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. Aue is present during several of the major events of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Background
The Oresteia
The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus which concerns the end of the curse on the House of Atreus. When originally performed it was accompanied by Proteus, a satyr play that would have been performed following the trilogy; it has not survived...
written by Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
. The Erinyes
Erinyes
In Greek mythology the Erinyes from Greek ἐρίνειν " pursue, persecute"--sometimes referred to as "infernal goddesses" -- were female chthonic deities of vengeance. A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as "those who beneath the earth punish whosoever has sworn a false oath"...
or Furies were vengeful goddesses who tracked and tormented those who murdered a parent. In the plays, Orestes
Orestes (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Orestes was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness and purification, which retain obscure threads of much older ones....
, who has killed his mother Clytemnestra
Clytemnestra
Clytemnestra or Clytaemnestra , in ancient Greek legend, was the wife of Agamemnon, king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Mycenae or Argos. In the Oresteia by Aeschylus, she was a femme fatale who murdered her husband, Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan princess...
to avenge his father Agamemnon
Agamemnon
In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope of Mycenae, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra, and the father of Electra and Orestes. Mythical legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area...
, was pursued by these female goddesses. The goddess Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
intervenes setting up a jury trial to judge the case of the Furies against Orestes. Athena gives the casting vote which acquits Orestes, then pleads with the Furies to accept the trial's verdict and to transform themselves into "Most loved of gods, with me to show and share fair mercy, gratitude and grace as fair." The Furies accept and are renamed the Eumenides
Erinyes
In Greek mythology the Erinyes from Greek ἐρίνειν " pursue, persecute"--sometimes referred to as "infernal goddesses" -- were female chthonic deities of vengeance. A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as "those who beneath the earth punish whosoever has sworn a false oath"...
or Kindly Ones (in French Les Bienveillantes).
When asked why he wrote such a book, Littell evokes a photo he discovered in 1989 of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya, alternatively Romanised as Kosmodem'yanskaya was a Soviet partisan, and a Hero of the Soviet Union...
, a Soviet partisan
Soviet partisans
The Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II....
hanged by the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
in 1941. At the time he had a pharaonic project of writing a 10-volume book, which he gave up after writing the first three. The seeds of The Kindly Ones are to be found in the future fourth volume. He adds that a bit later, in 1992, he watched the movie Shoah
Shoah (film)
This page is about the film by the name of Shoah. For other uses, see Shoah Shoah is a 1985 French documentary film directed by Claude Lanzmann about the Holocaust...
by Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann is a French filmmaker and professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.-Biography:Lanzmann attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in Auvergne...
, which left an impression on him, especially the discussion by Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...
about the bureaucratic
Bureaucracy
A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...
aspect of the genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
process.
In 2001, Littell decided to quit his job at Action Against Hunger
Action Against Hunger
Action Against Hunger is an international humanitarian organization with a focus on ending world hunger. Action Against Hunger specializes in responding to emergency situations of war, conflict, and natural disaster...
and started research which lasted 18 months, during which he went to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, and read around 200 books, mainly about Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, the Eastern Front
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
, the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
and the genocide process. In addition, the author studied the literature and film archives of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the post-war trials. Littell worked on this novel for about five years. This book is his first novel written in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
; he published an earlier science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
book called Bad Voltage in 1989.
Littell said he wanted to focus on the thinking of an executioner and of origins of state murder
Democide
Democide is a term revived and redefined by the political scientist R. J. Rummel as "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder." Rummel created the term as an extended concept to include forms of government murder that are not covered by the...
, showing how we can take decisions that lead, or not, to a genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
. Littell claims he set out creating the character Max Aue by imagining what he would have done and how he would have behaved if he had been born into Nazi Germany. One childhood event that kept Littell interested in the question of the killer was the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. According to him, "My childhood terror was that I would be drafted
Conscription in the United States
Conscription in the United States has been employed several times, usually during war but also during the nominal peace of the Cold War...
and sent to Vietnam and made to kill women and children who hadn't done anything to me."
Structure
Whereas the influence of Greek tragedies is clear from the choice of title, the absent father, and the roles of incestIncest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
and parricide
Parricide
Parricide is defined as:*the act of murdering one's father , mother or other close relative, but usually not children ....
, Littell makes it clear that he was influenced by more than the structure of The Oresteia. He found that the idea of morality in Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
is more relevant for making judgments about responsibility for the Holocaust than the Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian is a term used in the United States since the 1940s to refer to standards of ethics said to be held in common by Judaism and Christianity, for example the Ten Commandments...
approach, where the idea of sin
Sin
In religion, sin is the violation or deviation of an eternal divine law or standard. The term sin may also refer to the state of having committed such a violation. Christians believe the moral code of conduct is decreed by God In religion, sin (also called peccancy) is the violation or deviation...
can be blurred by the concepts such as intentional sin, unintentional sin, sinning by thought or sinning by deed. For the Greeks it was the commission of the act itself upon which one is judged: Oedipus
Oedipus
Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...
is guilty of patricide
Patricide
Patricide is the act of killing one's father, or a person who kills his or her father. The word patricide derives from the Latin word pater and the Latin suffix -cida...
, even if he did not know that he was killing his father.
Plot
The book is a fictional autobiography, describing the life of Maximilien Aue, a former officer in the SS who decades later tells the story of a crucial part of his life when he was an active member of the forces of the Third Reich. In the book, Aue accepts his responsibility for his actions in massacres of the JewsJews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
, but most of the time he feels more an observer than a direct participant.
Aue starts the war as a member of an Einsatzgruppe in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, during which he participates in the Babi Yar
Babi Yar
Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of a series of massacres carried out by the Nazis during their campaign against the Soviet Union. The most notorious and the best documented of these massacres took place on September 29–30, 1941, wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a...
massacre. He is then sent to the Battle of Stalingrad
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...
, but survives. After a convalescence period in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and a visit to France, he is designated for a managerial role for the concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
and visits both Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
and Belzec
Belzec extermination camp
Belzec, Polish spelling Bełżec , was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust...
extermination camps. He is present during the Battle of Berlin
Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, was the final major offensive of the European Theatre of World War II....
, Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
's last stand. By the end of the story, he leaves Germany unscathed. Throughout the book Aue meets several famous Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
, Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
and Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
.
The book is divided into seven chapters, each one with the name of a baroque dance
Baroque dance
Baroque dance is dance of the Baroque era , closely linked with Baroque music, theatre and opera.- English country dance :...
, following the sequence of a Bach Suite
Cello Suites (Bach)
The Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by Johann Sebastian Bach are some of the most performed and recognizable solo compositions ever written for cello...
. The narrative of each chapter is influenced by the rhythm of each dance.
« Toccata
Toccata
Toccata is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers...
»: In this introduction, we are introduced to the narrator and discover how he has ended up in France after the war. He is the director of a lace factory, has a wife, children and grandchildren, though he has no real affection for his family and continues his homosexual
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
encounters when he travels on business. He hints of an incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
uous love which we learn later was for his twin sister. He explains that he has decided to write about his experiences during the war for his own benefit and not as an attempt to justify himself, even though he insists that it took all kinds of men, good and bad, to make up the SS. He closes the introduction by saying, "I live, I do what is possible, it is the same for everyone, I am a man like the others, I am a man like you. Come along, I tell you, I am like you."
« Allemande I & II
Allemande
An allemande is one of the most popular instrumental dance forms in Baroque music, and a standard element of a suite...
»: Aue describes his life as a member of one of the Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
death squad
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
s in Ukraine, particularly in the Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
and in the Caucasus. He describes in detail the open air massacres of Jews and Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
s behind the front lines (one of the massacres described is the Babi Yar Massacre in Kiev, 1941). Although he seems to become increasingly indifferent to the atrocities he is witnessing, he begins to experience daily bouts of vomiting and suffers a mental breakdown
Mental breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
. After taking sick leave, he returns to his unit to discover that a hostile superior officer has arranged that he be transferred to the front line at Stalingrad
Volgograd
Volgograd , formerly called Tsaritsyn and Stalingrad is an important industrial city and the administrative center of Volgograd Oblast, Russia. It is long, north to south, situated on the western bank of the Volga River...
in 1942.
« Courante
Courante
The courante, corrente, coranto and corant are some of the names given to a family of triple metre dances from the late Renaissance and the Baroque era....
» : Aue thus takes part in the last days of the battle of Stalingrad
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...
. As with the massacres, he is the soldier observer, the narrator rather than the combatant. In the midst of the chaos, violence and starvation, he manages to have a discussion with a Russian political commissar
Political commissar
The political commissar is the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education and organisation, and loyalty to the government of the military...
POW about the similarities between the Nazi and the Bolshevik world views and once again is able to indicate his intellectual support for Nazi ideas. He is seriously wounded in the head and is miraculously evacuated just before the German surrender in February 1943.
« Sarabande
Sarabande
In music, the sarabande is a dance in triple metre. The second and third beats of each measure are often tied, giving the dance a distinctive rhythm of quarter notes and eighth notes in alternation...
»: Convalescing in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Aue is awarded the Iron Cross
Iron Cross
The Iron Cross is a cross symbol typically in black with a white or silver outline that originated after 1219 when the Kingdom of Jerusalem granted the Teutonic Order the right to combine the Teutonic Black Cross placed above a silver Cross of Jerusalem....
1st Class by Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
himself for his heroic action at Stalingrad. While still on sick leave, he decides to visit his mother and stepfather in Antibes
Antibes
Antibes is a resort town in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France.It lies on the Mediterranean in the Côte d'Azur, located between Cannes and Nice. The town of Juan-les-Pins is within the commune of Antibes...
, in Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
-occupied France. Apparently, while he is in a deep sleep, his mother and stepfather are brutally murdered. Max flees from the house without notifying anybody and returns to Berlin.
« Menuet en rondeaux
Minuet
A minuet, also spelled menuet, is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in 3/4 time. The word was adapted from Italian minuetto and French menuet, and may have been from French menu meaning slender, small, referring to the very small steps, or from the early 17th-century popular...
»: Aue is transferred to the Federal Ministry of the Interior
Federal Ministry of the Interior (Germany)
The Federal Ministry of the Interior is a ministry of the German federal government. Its main office is in Berlin, with a secondary seat in Bonn. The current minister of the interior is Dr...
headed by Himmler where he plays a managerial role for the concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
. He struggles to improve the living conditions of those prisoners, selected to work in the factories as slave laborers, in order to improve their productivity. The reader meets top Nazi bureaucrats organizing the implentation of the Final Solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
(i.e. Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
, Rudolf Höß
Rudolf Höß
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was an SS-Obersturmbannführer , and from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, where it is estimated that more than a million people were murdered...
, Himmler) and is given a glimpse of extermination camps (i.e. Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
, Belzec
Belzec extermination camp
Belzec, Polish spelling Bełżec , was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust...
); he also spends some time in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
just when preparations are being made for transporting Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz
History of the Jews in Hungary
Hungarian Jews have existed since at least the 11th century. After struggling against discrimination throughout the Middle Ages, by the early 20th century the community grew to be 5% of Hungary's population , and were prominent in science, the arts and business...
. The reader witnesses the tug-of-war between those who are concerned with war production (Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
) and those who are doggedly trying to implement the Final Solution. It is during this period that two SS police officers from the Kripo
Kriminalpolizei
is the standard term for the criminal investigation agency within the police forces of Germany, Austria and the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland. In Nazi Germany during 1936, the Kripo became the Criminal Police Department for the entire Reich...
who are investigating the murders of his mother and stepfather begin to visit him regularly. Like the Furies, they hound and torment him with their questions which indicate their suspicions about his role in the crime.
« Air
Air (music)
Air , a variant of the musical song form, is the name of various song-like vocal or instrumental compositions.-English lute ayres:...
»: Max visits his sister and brother-in-law's empty house in Pomerania
Pomerania
Pomerania is a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Divided between Germany and Poland, it stretches roughly from the Recknitz River near Stralsund in the West, via the Oder River delta near Szczecin, to the mouth of the Vistula River near Gdańsk in the East...
. There, he engages in a veritable autoerotic
Autoeroticism
Autoeroticism is the practice of stimulating oneself sexually. The term was popularized toward the end of the 19th century by British sexologist Havelock Ellis, who defined autoeroticism as "the phenomena of spontaneous sexual emotion generated in the absence of an external stimulus proceeding,...
orgy particularly fueled by fantasy images of his twin sister. The two SS police officers follow his trail to the house, but he manages to hide from them.
Gigue
The gigue or giga is a lively baroque dance originating from the British jig. It was imported into France in the mid-17th century and usually appears at the end of a suite...
»: Max travels back to Berlin through enemy Soviet lines with his friend Thomas, who has come to rescue him. Thomas is trying to pass off as a French laborer, knowing that his high SS rank is sure to get him killed if he is caught by Soviet forces. In Berlin, Max and Thomas find many of their colleagues preparing for escape in the chaos of the last days of the Third Reich. Aue meets and is decorated by Hitler in the Führerbunker
Führerbunker
The Führerbunker was located beneath Hitler's New Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. It was part of a subterranean bunker complex which was constructed in two major phases, one part in 1936 and the other in 1943...
. During the decoration ceremony, Aue inexplicably bites Hitler's nose, drawing blood and the wrath of Hitler's men, yet he manages to escape through the Berlin U-Bahn
Berlin U-Bahn
The Berlin is a rapid transit railway in Berlin, the capital city of Germany, and is a major part of the public transport system of that city. Opened in 1902, the serves 173 stations spread across ten lines, with a total track length of , about 80% of which is underground...
subway tunnels, only to encounter his police pursuers again. Though their case has been repeatedly thrown out of court, they're unwilling to accept defeat and prepare to execute him. Barely escaping their clutches when the Russians storm the tunnels and kill one of the policemen, Aue wanders aimlessly for a while in the streets of war-torn Berlin
Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, was the final major offensive of the European Theatre of World War II....
before deciding to make a break for it. Making his way through the heavily shelled Berlin Zoo, he's yet again faced by the surviving policeman. However, his friend Thomas kills the last policeman only to himself be killed by Aue, who steals from him the papers and uniform of a French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
conscripted worker
Forced labor in Germany during World War II
The use of forced labour in Nazi Germany and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in German-occupied...
. We know from the beginning of the book that Aue's multilingualism
Multilingualism
Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...
will allow him to escape back to France with a new identity as a returning Frenchman. The fact that he has managed to survive so many close calls and to escape successfully leads him to end the book with the statement: "The Kindly Ones were on to me."
But in the end, all is not explicitly laid out for the reader; for Littell, in the words of one reviewer, "excels in the unsaid."
Maximilien Aue
He is a former Nazi SS officer. The book is written in the form of his memoirMemoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
s.
Maximilen Aue's mother was French (from Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
), while his father, who left his mother and disappeared from their life in 1921, was German. Aue's mother remarried a Frenchman, Aristide Moreau, which Maximilien highly disapproved of. After a childhood in Germany and an adolescence in France, where he attends Sciences-Po
Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris
The Institut d'études politiques de Paris , simply referred to as Sciences Po , is a public research and higher education institution in Paris, France, specialised in the social sciences. It has the status of grand établissement, which allows its admissions process to be highly selective...
, he goes to a German university in order to study law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
. It is also during this period where he joins the SS.
Aue is a cultured, highly educated, classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
-loving intellectual. He speaks many languages fluently — German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, French, Ancient Greek and Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
— and holds a doctorate in law. Despite his French heritage and upbringing, he is, like his father, an ardent German Nationalist that fanatically believes in Nazi ideology, especially in the Final Solution. Even after the war, he is unrepentant of the crimes against humanity he committed in the name of the Nazis. He is extremely attracted to his twin sister Una which led to an incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
uous relationship with her when they were children, but ended when they entered puberty
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...
. Refusing to truly love any woman other than Una, he becomes a homosexual but continues to fantasize having sex with Una.
Aue's family
Una Aue / Frau Von ÜxküllUna Aue is Maximilien's twin sister. She is married to the aristocrat Berndt von Üxküll, and although she appears only briefly in person, she dominates Aue's imagination, particularly with his sexual fantasies
Sexual fantasy
A sexual fantasy, also called an erotic fantasy, is a fantasy or pattern of thoughts with the effect of creating or enhancing sexual feelings; in short, it is "almost any mental imagery that is sexually arousing or erotic to [an] individual"...
and hallucinations. She lived with her husband on his estate in Pomerania
Pomerania
Pomerania is a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Divided between Germany and Poland, it stretches roughly from the Recknitz River near Stralsund in the West, via the Oder River delta near Szczecin, to the mouth of the Vistula River near Gdańsk in the East...
, but apparently moved to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
with him towards the end of the war. Like her husband, she is critical of Germany's National Socialist regime which that, along with his hatred of their mother and stepfather, and his attraction to her, led to her being estranged from Aue following the war.
Berndt Von Üxküll
Berndt Von Üxkül is a paraplegic
Paraplegia
Paraplegia is an impairment in motor or sensory function of the lower extremities. The word comes from Ionic Greek: παραπληγίη "half-striking". It is usually the result of spinal cord injury or a congenital condition such as spina bifida that affects the neural elements of the spinal canal...
junker
Junker
A Junker was a member of the landed nobility of Prussia and eastern Germany. These families were mostly part of the German Uradel and carried on the colonization and Christianization of the northeastern European territories during the medieval Ostsiedlung. The abbreviation of Junker is Jkr...
from Pomerania and married to Una. A World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
veteran, he fought alongside Aue's father in the Freikorps
Freikorps
Freikorps are German volunteer military or paramilitary units. The term was originally applied to voluntary armies formed in German lands from the middle of the 18th century onwards. Between World War I and World War II the term was also used for the paramilitary organizations that arose during...
, describing him as a sadist
Sadistic personality disorder
Sadistic personality disorder is a diagnosis which appeared only in an appendix of the revised third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . The current version of the DSM does not include it, so it is no longer considered a valid...
. He is a composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
. Despite essentially agreeing with their nationalist and anti-Semitic ideology, he dislikes and thus distances himself from the Nazis. His name is probably a reference to Nikolaus Graf von Üxküll-Gyllenband
Nikolaus von Üxküll-Gyllenband
Nikolaus Graf von Üxküll-Gyllenband was a German businessman who took part in the July 20 plot.Nikolaus von Üxküll-Gyllenband was born in Güns , Austria-Hungary and joined the Austro–Hungarian Army prior to the First World War. After the war Üxküll worked as a businessman in Germany.He was an...
, an anti-Nazi resistant and uncle of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg commonly referred to as Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was a German army officer and Catholic aristocrat who was one of the leading members of the failed 20 July plot of 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler and remove the Nazi Party from...
.
Héloïse Aue (Héloïse Moreau)
Max's mother, who, believing her first husband to be dead, remarried Aristide Moreau. Max does not accept that his father is dead and never forgives his mother for remarrying. Héloïse also disapproves of Max joining the Nazis, which further strains their relationship.
Aristide Moreau
Max's stepfather who is apparently connected to the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
. Moreau is also the name of the "hero" from Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...
's Sentimental Education
Sentimental Education
Sentimental Education was Gustave Flaubert's last novel published during his lifetime, and is considered one of the most influential novels of the 19th century, being praised by contemporaries George Sand, Emile Zola, and Henry James.-Plot introduction:The novel describes the life of a young man ...
, a book that Aue reads later in the novel. 'Aristide' is reminiscent in French of Atrides, the name given to the descendants of Atreus
Atreus
In Greek mythology, Atreus was a king of Mycenae, the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. Collectively, his descendants are known as Atreidai or Atreidae....
(one of his sons is Agamemnon, who is present in The Oresteia).
The twins, Tristan and Orlando
Mysterious twin children who live with the Moreaus, but are most likely the offspring of the incestuous relationship between Aue and his sister. The epic poem Orlando Furioso
Orlando Furioso
Orlando Furioso is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was not published in its complete form until 1532...
is marked by the themes of love and madness, while the legend of Tristan and Iseult
Tristan and Iseult
The legend of Tristan and Iseult is an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with as many variations. The tragic story is of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Iseult...
tells the story of an impossible love, two themes that can be found in The Kindly Ones.
Other fictional characters
Thomas HauserThomas is Max's closest friend and the only person who appears in one capacity or another wherever he is posted. A highly educated, multilingual SS officer like Max, he is Aue's main source of information about bureaucratic
Bureaucracy
A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...
Nazi politics. He helps Max in a number of ways, both in advancing his career as well as rescuing him from his sister's house in Pomerania. He saves Max's life at the end of the novel.
Hélène Anders née Winnefeld
A young widow whom Aue meets through Thomas while working in Berlin. When Max becomes seriously ill, she voluntarily comes to his apartment and nurses him back to health. While she is attracted to him, as he initially expresses interest in her, due to his feelings for his sister, as well as his homosexual tendencies, he coldly turns her down and away. She leaves Berlin for her parents' house and writes asking if he intends to marry her. She does not appear again in the novel. In the Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, Helen marries Menelaus
Menelaus
Menelaus may refer to;*Menelaus, one of the two most known Atrides, a king of Sparta and son of Atreus and Aerope*Menelaus on the Moon, named after Menelaus of Alexandria.*Menelaus , brother of Ptolemy I Soter...
, brother of Agamemnon.
Dr. Mandelbrod
The mysterious Dr. Mandelbrod plays an important role behind the scenes as Aue's protector and promoter with high NSDAP connections, particular with Himmler. He was an admirer of Max's father and grandfather. At the end of the book he is seen packing his bags to join the enemy, offering his services to the Soviets
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
SS police officers Weser and Clemens
A pair of Kriminalpolizei
Kriminalpolizei
is the standard term for the criminal investigation agency within the police forces of Germany, Austria and the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland. In Nazi Germany during 1936, the Kripo became the Criminal Police Department for the entire Reich...
detectives who are in charge of the investigation into the murders of Aue's mother and her husband, they question and pursue Aue as if he were a prime murder suspect throughout the war despite the case being repeatedly thrown out. They play the role of the Erinyes
Erinyes
In Greek mythology the Erinyes from Greek ἐρίνειν " pursue, persecute"--sometimes referred to as "infernal goddesses" -- were female chthonic deities of vengeance. A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as "those who beneath the earth punish whosoever has sworn a false oath"...
in the novel.
Dr. Hohenegg
Aue's friend, a doctor interested in nutrition
Nutrition
Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary to support life. Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with a healthy diet....
as well as the condition of soldiers and prisoners in concentration camps. Aue meets him in Ukraine during the Nazi offensive against the Soviet Union. They both take part in battle of Stalingrad and successfully escape before the German surrender. They reunite in Berlin, with Hohenegg revealing to Max how he saved his life by convincing doctors at Stalingrad to operate on him and transport him back to Germany, rather than leaving him for dead. He is depicted at different points in the book. He is partially based on Ernst-Günther Schenck
Ernst-Günther Schenck
Prof. Dr. Ernst-Günther Schenck was a German Standartenführer and doctor who joined the SS in 1933. Because of a chance encounter with Adolf Hitler during the closing days of World War II, his memoirs proved historically valuable. His accounts of this period influenced the accounts of Joachim...
, a German physician and Standartenführer
Standartenführer
Standartenführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was used in the so-called Nazi combat-organisations: SA, SS, NSKK and the NSFK...
.
Historical characters
Littell also includes many historical figures that Max encounters throughout the novel.- High ranking Nazis: Werner BestWerner BestDr. Werner Best was a German Nazi, jurist, police chief, SS-Obergruppenführer and Nazi Party leader from Darmstadt, Hesse. He studied law and in 1927 obtained his doctorate degree at Heidelberg...
, Hermann FegeleinHermann FegeleinSS-Obergruppenführer Hans Georg Otto Hermann Fegelein was a General of the Waffen-SS in Nazi Germany, a member of Adolf Hitler's entourage, brother-in-law to Eva Braun through his marriage to her sister, Gretl, and husband of the sister-in-law to Adolf Hitler through Hitler's marriage to Eva...
, Hans FrankHans FrankHans Michael Frank was a German lawyer who worked for the Nazi party during the 1920s and 1930s and later became a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany...
, Odilo GlobocnikOdilo GlobocnikOdilo Lotario Globocnik was a prominent Austrian Nazi and later an SS leader. He was an acquaintance of Adolf Eichmann, who played a major role in the extermination of Jews and others during the Holocaust...
, Reinhard HeydrichReinhard HeydrichReinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
, Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich HimmlerHeinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, Adolf HitlerAdolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, Ernst KaltenbrunnerErnst KaltenbrunnerErnst Kaltenbrunner was an Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany during World War II. Between January 1943 and May 1945, he held the offices of Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt , President of Interpol and, as a Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei und Waffen-SS, he was the...
and Albert SpeerAlbert SpeerAlbert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
. - Other Nazi characters: Richard BaerRichard BaerRichard Baer was a German Nazi official with the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer and commander of the Auschwitz I concentration camp from May 1944 to February 1945. He was a member of N.S.D.A.P...
, Paul BlobelPaul BlobelPaul Blobel was a German Nazi war criminal, an SS-Standartenführer and a member of the SD. Born in the city of Potsdam, he participated in the First World War, where by all accounts he served well and was decorated with the Iron Cross first class...
, Martin BormannMartin BormannMartin Ludwig Bormann was a prominent Nazi official. He became head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler...
, Adolf EichmannAdolf EichmannAdolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
, Rudolf HößRudolf HößRudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was an SS-Obersturmbannführer , and from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, where it is estimated that more than a million people were murdered...
, Arthur LiebehenschelArthur LiebehenschelArthur Liebehenschel was a commandant at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps during World War II. He was convicted of war crimes after the war and executed.-Biography:...
, Josef MengeleJosef MengeleJosef Rudolf Mengele , also known as the Angel of Death was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University...
, Heinrich Müller, Arthur NebeArthur NebeSS-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe was a member of the NSDAP party with card number 574,307. In July 1931, he joined the SS and his membership number was 280,152. His early career included the Berlin position of Police Commissioner in the 1920s...
, Theodor OberländerTheodor OberländerTheodor Oberländer was an Ostforschung scientist, Nazi officer and German politician. Before Second World War he devised plans aimed against Jewish and Polish population in territories that were to be conquered by Nazi Germany...
, Otto OhlendorfOtto OhlendorfOtto Ohlendorf was a German SS-Gruppenführer and head of the Inland-SD , a section of the SD. Ohlendorf was the commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe D, which conducted mass murder in Moldova, south Ukraine, the Crimea, and, during 1942, the north Caucasus...
, Otto RaschOtto RaschSS-Brigadeführer Otto Rasch was a high-ranking Nazi official in the occupied Eastern territories, commanding Einsatzgruppe C until October 1941. As a commanding officer, he was a Holocaust perpetrator and mass murderer.-Biography:Rasch was born in Friedrichsruh, northern Germany...
, Franz SixFranz SixDr. Franz Alfred Six was a Nazi official who rose to the rank of SS-Brigadeführer. He was appointed by Reinhard Heydrich to head department Amt VII, Written Records of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt...
, Eduard WirthsEduard WirthsEduard Wirths was the Chief SS doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp from September 1942 to January 1945...
and Dieter WislicenyDieter WislicenyDieter Wisliceny was a member of the Nazi SS, and a key executioner in the final phase of the Holocaust.Wisliceny studied theology without obtaining a degree...
. - French collaborators: Robert BrasillachRobert BrasillachRobert Brasillach was a French author and journalist. Brasillach is best known as the editor of Je suis partout, a nationalist newspaper which came to advocate various fascist movements and supported Jacques Doriot...
and Lucien RebatetLucien RebatetLucien Rebatet was a French author, journalist and intellectual, an exponent of fascism and virulent antisemite.-Early life:...
. - Contemporary writers that have no interaction with Aue: Ernst JüngerErnst JüngerErnst Jünger was a German writer. In addition to his novels and diaries, he is well known for Storm of Steel, an account of his experience during World War I. Some say he was one of Germany's greatest modern writers and a hero of the conservative revolutionary movement following World War I...
, Charles MaurrasCharles MaurrasCharles-Marie-Photius Maurras was a French author, poet, and critic. He was a leader and principal thinker of Action Française, a political movement that was monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary. Maurras' ideas greatly influenced National Catholicism and "nationalisme...
, Louis-Ferdinand CélineLouis-Ferdinand CélineLouis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...
, Paul CarellPaul CarellPaul Carell was an Obersturmbannführer in the civilian Allgemeine SS. He worked as the chief press spokesman for Nazi Germany's Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop...
. - Historians cited by Aue: Alan BullockAlan BullockAlan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock , was a British historian, who wrote an influential biography of Adolf Hitler and many other works.-Early life and career:...
, Raul HilbergRaul HilbergRaul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...
, Hugh Trevor-Roper.
France
Besides winning two of the most prestigious literary prizes in France (Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie françaiseGrand Prix du roman de l'Académie française
Le Grand Prix du Roman is a French literary award, created in 1918, and given each year by the Académie française. Along with the Prix Goncourt, it is one of the oldest and most prestigious literary awards in France...
and Prix Goncourt
Prix Goncourt
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
), Les Bienveillantes was generally favourably reviewed in the French literary press. Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
proclaimed Littell as "man of the year" and the weekly Le Point
Le Point
Le Point is a French weekly news magazine. It was founded in 1972 by a group of journalists who had, one year earlier, left the editorial team of L'Express, which was then owned by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, a député of the Parti Radical...
stated that the book “exploded onto the dreary plain of the literary autumn like a meteor.” The editor of the Nouvel Observateurs literary section called it "a great book." Even though Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann is a French filmmaker and professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.-Biography:Lanzmann attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in Auvergne...
had mixed feelings about the book, he said that "Littell is very talented (...) I am familiar with his subject, and above all I was astounded by the absolute accuracy of the novel. Everything is correct." Pierre Nora
Pierre Nora
Pierre Nora is a French historian of Jewish descent. Elected to the French Academy on June 7, 2001, he is known for his work on French identity and memory. His name is associated with the study of new history...
called it "...an extraordinary literary and historical phenomenon..."
Initially, Littell thought that his book would sell around three to five thousand copies. Éditions Gallimard
Éditions Gallimard
Éditions Gallimard is one of the leading French publishers of books. The Guardian has described it as having "the best backlist in the world". In 2003 it and its subsidiaries published 1418 titles....
, his publishing house, was more optimistic and decided to print 12,000 copies. Word of mouth and the enthusiastic reviews soon catapulted sales to such an extent that Gallimard had to stop publishing the latest Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
novel in order to meet the demand for The Kindly Ones, which ended up selling more than 700,000 copies in France by the end of 2007.
Germany
After the book was translated into GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, there was widespread debate in Germany, during which Littell was accused of being "a pornographer of violence." Some criticised it from a historical perspective: one historian called the novel a “strange, monstrous book” that was "full of errors and anachronisms over wartime German culture".
United States and United Kingdom
On its publication in EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
in early 2009, The Kindly Ones received mixed reviews. Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani
is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times and is considered by many to be a leading literary critic in the United States.-Life and career:...
, the principal book critic of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, called the novel "[w]illfully sensationalistic and deliberately repellent", and went on to question the "perversity" of the French literary establishment for praising the novel. In a reply to Kakutani, Michael Korda
Michael Korda
Michael Korda is a writer and novelist who was editor-in-Chief of Simon & Schuster in New York City.-Early Years:...
says that "You want to read about Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
, here it is. If you don’t have the strength to read it, tough shit. It’s a dreadful, compelling, brilliantly researched, and imagined masterpiece, a terrifying literary achievement, and perhaps the first work of fiction to come out of the Holocaust that places us in its very heart, and keeps us there." The British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
historian Antony Beevor
Antony Beevor
Antony James Beevor, FRSL is a British historian, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous military historian John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars who served in England and Germany for five years before resigning his commission...
, reviewing it in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, called it "a great work of literary fiction, to which readers and scholars will turn for decades to come," and listed The Kindly Ones as one of the top five fictional books about World War II. Harvard English
English studies
English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...
Professor Leland de la Durantaye writes that "the meticulously realistic main plot of The Kindly Ones is brilliantly organized and written". And The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
's Paris correspondent, Jason Burke
Jason Burke
Jason Burke is a British journalist and the author of several non-fiction books. A correspondent covering South Asia for The Observer and The Guardian, he is based in New Delhi as of 2010. In his years of journalism, Burke has addressed a wide range of topics including politics, social affairs and...
, praises the book, writing that "The Kindly Ones also owes its success to its quality as a work of fiction. Notwithstanding the controversial subject matter, this is an extraordinarily powerful novel". The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
s literary reviewer, Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner CBE is an English language novelist and art historian who was born in Herne Hill, a suburb of London.-Early life and education:...
, based on her reading of the novel in the original French, describes the book as a "masterly novel...diabolically (and I use the word advisedly) clever. It is also impressive, not merely as an act of impersonation but perhaps above all for the fiendish diligence with which it is carried out...presuppose(s) formidable research on the part of the author, who is American, educated in France and writing fluent, idiomatic and purposeful French. This tour de force, which not everyone will welcome, outclasses all other fictions and will continue to do so for some time to come. No summary can do it justice".
Sales in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
were considered extremely low. The book was bought by HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
for a rumored $1 million, and the first printing consisted of 150,000 copies. According to Nielsen BookScan
Nielsen BookScan
Nielsen BookScan is a data provider for the book publishing industry, owned by the Nielsen Company. BookScan compiles point of sale data for book sales.-History:...
— which captures around 70 percent of total sales – by the end of July 2009 only 17,000 copies were sold.
Further reading
- Bukiet, Melvin JulesMelvin Jules BukietMelvin Jules Bukiet is an author and literary critic. He jas written a number of novels, including Sandman's Dust, After, While the Messiah Tarries, Signs and Wonders, Strange Fire, and A Faker's Dozen. He edited the collections Neurotica: Jewish Writers on Sex, Nothing Makes You Free, and...
(March 7, 2009). A Leering Look at the Holocaust. The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
. Retrieved on 2010-09-24. - Derbyshire, JonathanJonathan DerbyshireJonathan Derbyshire is culture editor of the New Statesman. He is also a literary journalist whose work has been published in the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and the Financial Times.-External links:...
(March 12, 2009). With Hitler and his pals. New StatesmanNew StatesmanNew Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
. Retrieved on 2009-08-18. - Franklin, Ruth (April 1, 2009). Night and Cog. The New RepublicThe New RepublicThe magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
. Retrieved on 2009-04-21. - Gates, DavidDavid Gates (author)David Gates is an American journalist and novelist. His first novel, Jernigan , about a dysfunctional one-parent family, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. This was followed by a second novel, Preston Falls , and a short story collection, The Wonders of the Invisible World...
(March 5, 2009). The Monster in the Mirror. The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. Retrieved on 2010-09-24. - Golsan, Richard J., Suleiman, Susan R., Suite Française and Les Bienveillantes, Two Literary "Exceptions" : A Conversation, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, vol. 12, no 3 (2008), p. 321–330
- Grossman, LevLev GrossmanLev Grossman is an American novelist and journalist, notably the author of the novels Warp , Codex , The Magicians and The Magician King...
(Mar. 19, 2009). The Good Soldier. TimeTime (magazine)Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
. Retrieved on 2009-04-25. - Hodes, Laura (March 4, 2009). Furious Responsibilities. The ForwardThe ForwardThe Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...
. Retrieved on 2009-04-21. - Hussey, AndrewAndrew HusseyAndrew Hussey OBE is a cultural historian and biographer, born in Liverpool, England. He lectured in French at the University of Huddersfield in the mid to late 1990s. He was a Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Wales Aberystwyth and since 2006 he has been the Head of French and...
(February 27, 2009). The Kindly Ones, By Jonathan Littell, translated by Charlotte Mandell. The IndependentThe IndependentThe Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
. Retrieved on 2009-04-21. - Hussey, Andrew (December 11, 2006). Guilty pleasures. New StatesmanNew StatesmanNew Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
. Retrieved on 2010-09-24. - Kemp, Peter (March 1, 2009). The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell. The Sunday TimesThe Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
. Retrieved on 2009-04-21. - Lasdun, JamesJames LasdunJames Lasdun is an English author, poet and academic. Lasdun was one of the judges for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize.-Career:...
(February 28, 2009). The exoticism of evil. The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
. Retrieved on 2009-08-18. - Lemonier, Marc, Les Bienveillantes décryptées. Le Pré aux Clercs. (2007) ISBN 978-2-266-18164-8.
- Littell, Jonathan, (November 13, 2006). Lettres de Jonathan Littell à ses traducteurs. Retrieved on 2009-04-24
- Mandell, Charlotte, (March 14, 2009). Living Inside The Kindly Ones. Beatrice.com. Retrieved on 2009-04-24
- Marham, Patrick (March 4, 2009). Not for the faint-hearted. The SpectatorThe SpectatorThe Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
. Retrieved on 2009-04-21. - Morrison, Donald (February 21, 2009). The Kindly Ones. Financial TimesFinancial TimesThe Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
. Retrieved on 2009-04-21. - Razinsky, Liran, History, Excess and Testimony in Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes, French Forum, vol. 33, no 3 (Autumn 2008), p. 69–87
- Moyn, SamuelSamuel MoynSamuel Moyn is a professor of history at Columbia University. His research interests are in modern European intellectual history, with special interests in France and Germany, political and legal thought, mathematical and critical theory, and sometimes Jewish studies.He is the co director of the...
(March 4, 2009). A Nazi Zelig: Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones. The NationThe NationThe Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
. Retrieved on 2009-04-21. - Schuessler, Jennifer (March 21, 2009). Writing with the Devil. The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. Retrieved on 2010-09-24. - Suleiman, Susan Rubin, When the Perpetrator Becomes a Reliable Witness of the Holocaust : On Jonathan Littell's Les Bienveillantes, New German CritiqueNew German CritiqueThe New German Critique is a contemporary academic journal in German studies. It is associated with the Department of German Studies at Cornell University...
, vol. 36, no 1 (2009), p. 1–19 - Suleiman, Susan Rubin (March 15, 2009). Raising Hell. The Boston GlobeThe Boston GlobeThe Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
. Retrieved on 2011-06-20. - Theweleit, KlausKlaus TheweleitKlaus Theweleit is a German sociologist and writer.-Life:Theweleit was born in East Prussia, the son of a railway company worker. He wrote the following about his father: "Above all he was a railroader, wholeheartedly, as he used to say, and then a human being. He was a rather good human being and...
, On the German Reaction to Jonathan Littell's Les Bienveillantes, New German CritiqueNew German CritiqueThe New German Critique is a contemporary academic journal in German studies. It is associated with the Department of German Studies at Cornell University...
, vol. 36, no 1 (2009), p. 21–34
External links
- Official blog Site in German by Frankfurter Allgemeine