Jonathan Littell: The Kindly Ones, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Kurzbeschreibung

A literary prize-winning novel that has been an explosive bestseller around the world, this extraordinary achievement by an American writer was the most talked-about book of the Winter 2009 season

Beschreibung

THE KINDLY ONES is the fictional memoir of a former Nazi official who survived the war and has reinvented himself, many years later, as a middle class family man, the owner of a lace factory in northern France. As the novel opens, he introduces himself to the reader--whom he addresses as his fellow human being, his brother--and promises that the story he has to tell is one that implicates the reader as well as the narrator. It s a terrifying story, brutal, violent, and often difficult to read in its graphic detail.
Understandably, THE KINDLY ONES has been a hugely controversial work of fiction. Maximilian Aue, who would rather have studied literature than the law, graduates as a Doctor of Jurisprudence in Berlin just after the Nazis come to power in Germany. He joins the Sicherheitsdienst, a security branch of the SS, and begins a new life as a Nazi official. In Jonathan Littell s monumental fictional epic, Max recounts the story of his life, and the times through which he lived, in vivid and precise detail. Through his eyes, we experience the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust during the period stretching 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. Through this dark and disturbing character, THE KINDLY ONES offers a unique experience of this tumultuous, tormented period of history, narrated from the point of view of the executioner rather than the victim.
Massive in scope, horrific in subject matter, and shocking in its protagonist, the cultivated yet monstrous SS-Obersturmfuhrer Maximilian Aue, Littell s masterpiece is an intense, hallucinatory, and utterly original work of fiction. It has been compared to Tolstoy s WAR AND PEACE and Vasily Grossman s LIFE AND FATE, classic epics of war that, like THE KINDLY ONES, are morally challenging reads.

Klappentext

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.