Author: Littell, Jonathan, 1967-
Title: The kindly ones: a novel
Published: New York: Harper Perennial, 2010
Description: 983 p. ; 21 cm.
Call Number: PQ3939 L58 B513 2010
Note(s): Translated by Charlotte Mandell. Originally published as: Les beinveilantes. Paris: Éditons Gallimard, 2006. Winner of Prix Goncourt, 2006, Grand Prix du roman, 2006
Summary: Fictional memoir of Dr. Max Aue, a former Nazi officer who survived the war and has reinvented himself, many years later, as a middle-class entrepreneur and family man in northern France. Max is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man, we experience the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews in graphic, disturbingly precise detail from the dark and disturbing point of view of the executioner rather than the victim. During the period from June 1941 through April 1945, Max is posted to Poland, the Ukraine, and the Caucasus; he is present at the Battle of Stalingrad, at Auschwitz and Cracow; he visits occupied Paris and lives through the chaos of the final days of the Nazi regime in Berlin. Although Max is a totally imagined character, his world is peopled by real historical figures, such as Eichmann, Himmler, Goring, Speer, Heydrich, Hoss, and Hitler himself
Subject(s):
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei. Schutzstaffel -- Fiction
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei. Einsatzgruppen des Sicherheitsdienstes und der Sicherheitspolizei -- Fiction
Nazis -- Fiction
World War, 1939-1945 -- Atrocities -- Fiction
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Fiction
Bisexual men -- Germany -- Fiction
Historical fiction
Review(s):
LACAPRA, DOMINICK. "HISTORICAL AND LITERARY APPROACHES TO THE 'FINAL SOLUTION': SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER AND JONATHAN LITTELL." History & Theory 50, no. 1 (February 2011): 71-97
Razinsky, Liran. "Not the Witness We Wished For: Testimony in Jonathan Littell's "Kindly Ones.." In Modern Language Quarterly, 175-196. 2010
Theweleit, Klaus. "On the German Reaction to Jonathan Littell's Les bienveillantes." New German Critique no. 106 (Winter 2009): 21-34
Franklin, Ruth. "NIGHT AND COG." New Republic 240, no. 5 (April 2009): 38-43
MOYN, SAMUEL. "A Nazi Zelig." Nation 288, no. 11 (March 23, 2009): 31-34
Read: April 13, 2011
