The Kindly Ones Johnathon Littell Book
by Johnathon Littell

Book Comments & Discussion (3)

UnknownOPOct 2009

The fictional autobioraphy of an S.S. officer who escapes world war two and builds a new life in France. One of the best books written in the last five years.

oksubstanceOct 22, 2009

I am half-way through the French version of this book. I came across it from a review article in the New York Times. To say the least, Johnathan Littell has an outrageous and wild imagination. The book is very dark. In fact, the darkness runs trough almost every page of the book. It is very well written though, but I think it has way too many details! When I am done with it, I don't think I'll ever read it again!

SibaritDec 12, 2009

Excellent book; the writer went to great pains to study the history of the Great Patriotic War (WW2, as Westerners know it), his description of Caucasus mountain tribes and their languages is true to every last detail, as well as everything else concerning the war in Ukraine and the battle of Stalingrad. I read it with immense pleasure (in French).

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Storyline

Named one of the "100 Best Books of the Decade" by The Times of London

"Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened."

A former Nazi officer, Dr. Maximilien Aue has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. 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 in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Eichmann, Himmler, GÖring, Speer, Heydrich, HÖss—even Hitler himself—play a role in Max's story. An intense and hallucinatory historical epic, The Kindly Ones is also a morally challenging read. It holds a mirror up to humanity—and the reader cannot look away.