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Harper
March 2009
On Sale: March 3, 2009
992 pages
ISBN: 0061353450
EAN: 9780061353451
Hardcover
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Fiction
"Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened." So
begins the chilling fictional memoir of Dr. Maximilien Aue,
a former Nazi officer who has reinvented himself, many
years after the war, as a middle-class family man and
factory owner in 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 in disturbingly
precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the
Nazi genocide of the Jews. 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
and at Auschwitz; and he 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, Göring,
Speer, Heyrich, Höss, and Hitler himself. A supreme historical epic and a haunting work of fiction,
Jonathan Littell's masterpiece is intense, hallucinatory,
and utterly original. Published to impressive critical
acclaim in France in 2006, it went on to win the Prix
Goncourt, that country's most prestigious literary award,
and sparked a broad range of responses and questions from
readers: How does fiction deal with the nature of human
evil? How should a novel encompass the Holocaust? At what
point do history and fiction come together and where do
they separate? A provocative and controversial work of literature, The
Kindly Ones is a morally challenging read; it holds up a
mirror to humanity—and the reader cannot look away.
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