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The Kindly Ones

by Jonathan Littell, Charlotte Mandell (Translator)

3.77 · rating details · 1,325 ratings · 353 reviews

"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 assa

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Hardcover, 984 pages

Published March 1st 2009 by Harper (first published 2006)

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Community Reviews

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Nov 14, 2011

Paul marked it as assorted-rants-about-stuff

Check out this ST review for a devastating demonstration of why this hugely praised (in Europe) novel is actually total rubbish -

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/t...

I've not seen such a tirade of abuse for a long time.

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Jul 24, 2008

Thylacoleo_carnifex rated it

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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. 13/06/2008
Llevo 400 páginas y anoto lo leído hasta ahora, porque cuando acabe habré olvidado buena parte de lo pensado hasta ahora. Si alguien no quiere que le destripe el libro, que no siga.

Aunque antes de destripar nada una cuestión que me deja desazonado todas las noches: por qué se llama las benévolas?

Al lío, que hay tema.

El bueno de Jonnhy nos cuenta la vida de un ciudano alemán que por cuestiones de la vida (o más bien de un apretón en un parque a...more

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Feb 12, 2008

Marianne rated it

· review of another edition

Pages and pages of gore, entrails, decapitations, burnings, burials, shootings, burnings.... as if we didn't know that certain "people" had done these things. I do not and will never understand why this was a Prix Goncourt. It should have been Prix du Mauvais Gout.

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Mar 17, 2009

Michel rated it

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Recommended to Michel by: JP Delvaux

Shelves: hist-fic, doulce, lit, cultures, war

The English translation of les Bienveillantes is a travesti. All the sardonic irony and the disgust of the author for his protagonist is lost; imagine taking seriously the Blagojevich defence (I am being punished for doing the right thing for the people who voted for me)!
It starts with the double-entendres (the word 'bienveillant' means 'kind' of course, but it can also denote watchfulness, or paternalism or 'meaning well', depending on the context) when ambiguity is the book's medium; th...more

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May 12, 2009

Matt rated it

Lugging this gigantic book around, from Omaha to Minneapolis to Dubai to Chicago back to Omaha, I began to question why I was reading it. It's nearly a thousand pages long; it's poorly translated; it was apparently edited by a monkey dying of Ebola; it has paragraphs that run on for pages, and pages, and pages; for some reason, there is no indentation for dialogue, so you're left guessing which indistinguishable character is saying which facile/stilted/cliched/boring thing; the translation is im...more

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May 30, 2008

Lavinie rated it

· review of another edition

Les Bienveillantes, que l'auteur américain Jonathan Littell a choisi de rédiger en français, est un livre très dense, très complet, très lourd. Je dois avouer que les seules raisons qui font que je n'aie pas abandonné le livre dans les premiers récits du second chapitre, ont été d'une part mon incapacité de laisser un livre inachevé, et de l'autre le sentiment d'une nécessité de lire les mots difficiles et brutaux des actes impardonnables de cet officier SS, Allemand tout comme moi.

L...moreLes Bienveillantes, que l'auteur américain Jonathan Littell a choisi de rédiger en français, est un livre très dense, très complet, très lourd. Je dois avouer que les seules raisons qui font que je n'aie pas abandonné le livre dans les premiers récits du second chapitre, ont été d'une part mon incapacité de laisser un livre inachevé, et de l'autre le sentiment d'une nécessité de lire les mots difficiles et brutaux des actes impardonnables de cet officier SS, Allemand tout comme moi.

L'histoire est celle du Sturmbannführer Maximilan Aue, jeune intellectuel épris de littérature, de musique, de grec. Jeune homme érudit, idéaliste, au tempérament allemand profondément romantique, qui est une sorte d'Oreste actuel.
Aue servira tout d'abord en Ukraine, où il sera impliqué dans l'exécution des Juifs, fusillés systématiquement puisque considérés comme traîtres et partisans bolchéviques potentiels. Son état de santé se détériore, il supporte mal ces exécutions massives qui s'étendent maintenant aussi aux femmes et aux enfants, on l'envoie se reposer en Crimée. Un échec de son supérieur Bierkamp face à la Wehrmacht sur une question ethnique d'un peuple du Caucase et Aue se verra expédié au front, dans le Kessel de Stalingrad. Blessé par un sniper russe, il sera rapatrié dans le Reich et servira Himmler à Berlin. Il aura a charge de faire monter l'effectif de la main d'œuvre, soit concrètement d'augmenter le nombre des prisonniers aptes au travail, d'améliorer les conditions de vie des détenus aptes et sera amené à visiter différents camps de concentrations, dont Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sa santé psychique se dégrade de pair avec la lente chute du Reich, il finit par ne plus être maître de ses actes et n'est définitivement plus capable de faire la séparation entre le vécu et le rêve.

Les Bienveillantes pose la question du mal, de l'inceste (relation entre Max et sa sœur jumelle Una), de la responsabilité face aux massacres, de l'homosexualité.

Un très bon livre, pas facile à lire de part son langage très cru, très froid, très neutre (les crânes qui explosent, la cervelle mêlée à des bout d'os et des cheveux, cette partisane russe pendue qui gît dans la neige, le sein rongé par les chiens, le meurtre de Yakov, le petit pianiste juif de Jitomir qui adorait Bach et qui jouait pour les officiers de la SS (et dont je suis évidemment tombée amoureuse)).

Un récit et une problématique qui aideront tous ceux qui cherchent à se positionner, non seulement face à ces évènements de la Seconde guerre mondiale, mais aussi face à toutes les atrocités avant et après, hier, aujourd'hui, et malheureusement sans doute aussi demain.
(less)

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Dec 29, 2008

Nacho rated it

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Shelves: contemporánea

Es muy bueno, pero también un ladrillo considerable. A veces pasan veinte páginas sin un solo punto y aparte. No me queda claro si las casi mil páginas eran necesarias, pero, desde luego, consiguen anestesiar la sensibilidad del lector. Hasta tal punto que, al final, apenas te inmutas por cómo el narrador (un oficial de las SS) cosifica a las víctimas judías y racionaliza las barbaries que ve y comete.

Nota (pedantilla, pero creo que útil): Sobre por qué el título es el que es, recomi...more

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Mar 24, 2009

Sheree rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Sep 06, 2010

Ben Babcock rated it

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Shelves: from-library, 2010-read, historical-fiction, literary-pretentious, not-my-cup-of-tea

This may not be evident, but I tend to avoid historical fiction set during World War II. I'm not sure why: it's an obvious (perhaps too obvious) source of material for exploring the human condition. I'm not squeamish about the details of the Holocaust. Maybe it's just that a lot of World War II fiction focuses on the battles, the military strategy and tactics, and it's military fiction that I'm avoiding. In the last month, however, I read Time's Arrow and The Kindly Ones, both of which are m...more

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Dec 26, 2009

S. rated it

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Shelves: 500-plus-pages, wwii-holocaust, read-in-2009, 1001-list, german-ic-y, war

Reading “The Kindly Ones” is like roaming around a dilapidated mansion – it begs you to explore; it is both fascinating and repulsive. The book is very ambitious, and it’s a pleasure to read literature that takes on a serious if uncomfortable subject, and literature that takes itself seriously. I would have given this five stars, and I do find it largely successful, but there are some snags in the subplot that don’t quite work for me.

The overarching historical plot works well. The pr...moreReading “The Kindly Ones” is like roaming around a dilapidated mansion – it begs you to explore; it is both fascinating and repulsive. The book is very ambitious, and it’s a pleasure to read literature that takes on a serious if uncomfortable subject, and literature that takes itself seriously. I would have given this five stars, and I do find it largely successful, but there are some snags in the subplot that don’t quite work for me.

The overarching historical plot works well. The protagonist, Maximilien Aue, visits the significant WWII hot spots: Babi Yar, Stalingrad, Auschwitz, and Berlin as it falls. I found the perspective gripping. And rather than finding his interaction with actual notorious Nazis ridiculous - Himmler, Speer, Eichmann, Höss, Mengele, Hitler and Bormann, his mustache brush - I found the approach better than fictionalizing the bigwigs with aliases we’d have to guess at. Mostly, I appreciated the point of view – I’ve read other WWII novels but few if any in which we’re escorted by a perpetrator of the Holocaust. It’s a privileged if disgusting view. While there is obscene crime in the book, no need to get all righteous about it and refuse to read on. (If your stomach is weak, don’t even try this book.) The protagonist would tell you that everything that happened in WWII was caused by human beings, not aliens or monsters or genetic mutants. Aue himself doesn’t seem designed to represent some horrid beast. For the most part, he appears to be a cultivated, educated but otherwise ordinary man sucked into the infernal machine.

And yet – and here comes my problem with the subplot – he’s not some ordinary man. He is one fucked-up cookie with some heavy issues, mostly being obsessively in love with his twin sister, with whom he longs to be one. And he unfairly despises his French mother, whom he feels betrayed his German father, thus setting up psychologically Aue’s allegiance to the Fatherland. And he is not just compelled to murder as a consequence of war, but he’s also an out-and-out murderer. Aue would also have preferred to be a woman. No sin there, but definitely not some ordinary guy tricked into doing the devil’s business. His sexual perversions don’t stop at desiring his sister. He also gets it on with a specially whittled tree branch at the tail-end of an excessive and prolonged masturbatory orgy. The fantasies! Ugh. I was both surprised and not surprised that “The Kindly Ones” won the “Bad Sex Award” for fiction in 2009. Not for sex that takes place – rather a wet dream. Oy.

At the end, Aue is pursued both by oncoming Russians but also by “the kindly ones,” aka the Furies, for his personal crimes. I both enjoyed this mix of main plot/subplot and found it distracting. And in all cases, Aue knows he is guilty and yet he doesn’t seem to regret anything, for various reasons.

On the downside, the author does tend to go off on tangents that can be worse than tedious – they’re sometimes hard to follow. Many deal with bureaucratic issues, but for me the most exasperating was the long monologue on Caucasian linguistics by Aue’s friend Voss. I suppose the point about the difficulty and/or futility of being able to identify a language’s/people’s true origins was clear, still the author really begged the reader’s patience. I can only imagine that such passages are intended to play up the contrast of how tedium exists alongside horror. Nevertheless, whereas I would have given up on other books, this was too interesting to put down. Once the dull spots were slogged through, it was easy to get caught up again.

My favorite parts of the book were the hallucinatory segments. When Aue’s arm frees itself from his body of its own accord and goes off shooting wildly, disconnected from him. When he is shot in Stalingrad and suddenly he’s swimming the Volga, then floating about in a dirigible with a mad scientist type. When the masturbatory episodes exhausts itself and Aue imagines a dead figure in the snow.

Finally, I liked the figure of the Helene. It was important to me that she was part of the book. The scene where Aue tells her what the deal out east really is brings it home for me. She says the German people will have to pay for their crimes, and Aue responds, yes, if they lose, their enemies will be pitiless. But Helene says even if the Germans win they are going to pay. So true! I found her a sobering anchor-point in this sprawling book. Unfortunately, Helene has to be abandoned, because Aue is guilty and condemned and although human, he is divorced from human comfort.(less)

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Mar 03, 2009

Muriel rated it

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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 29, 2008

Joel Grijalva rated it

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Recommends it for: lectores de prosa pacientes, aficionados a palabras como Sturmbannführer u Obersturmbannführer

Llevo quinientas páginas, no estoy seguro de que reseñar media novela sea conveniente. Pero puedo comentar la contraportada: o Vargas Llosa sólo leyó hasta la página 300, o alguien eligió pésimamente el fragmento de su opinión para el forro. Me inclino por la segunda, aunque me divierta más la posibilidad de la primera.

Listo. Poco menos de mil páginas. Ahora sí comento la novela, y al comentarla tendré que confesarme: no es de mi agrado. En algunos momentos semeja una crónica impreso...more

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Mar 16, 2009

Diane rated it

I read reviews of this book and how it's being touted as a great literary masterpiece. I had to stop reading; I was getting nauseous over the minute details of how to kill people, specifically Russian Jews. At this time, I prefer to read books for escapism instead of depressing works outlining the extermination of Jews. The non-fiction books about the Holocaust are descriptive enough. And have we as humans learned from the horrors of WWII? Not yet. Sad.

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Mar 30, 2009

Kevin rated it

When the The Kindly Ones came out a few years ago in France it sold millions and won some of Europe's most prestigious literary awards . I was surprised therefore, to read so many negative reviews when it was recently released here in the U.S.
It seems people either loved it or hated it. Well add me to the list of those who loved it ! Yes, its dark, depressing, and in places, deranged to the point of perversion. But that's what makes it so fascinating. And I have no doubt, that in ...more

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Jun 25, 2007

Nicholas rated it

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Creator of the biggest literary storm in France since the Surrealists trashed Latin Quarter cafés, Littel's first-person narrative of an SS officer's participation in the death squads has attracted moral and historical wranglings from fields as far as Julia Kristeva to Shoah survivors to opportunistic politicians. No-one does literary controversy like the French; but in spite of this, French critics have all but ignored certain aspects of a mainly extraordinary book, (aspects which will no doubt...more

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Aug 07, 2011

Andrew Rosner added it · review of another edition

I somehow managed to wade through this doorstop, which I thought I'd never be able to do - and I'm usually partial to such lengthy tomes. Somehow this book won a literary award in France, which doesn't speak well for the present state of French culture.

Littell clearly has a very jaundiced view of humanity and if you look at his resume - he's worked in humanitarian aid in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, and the Congo - it's easy to understand why. Name the hellhole of your choice, he's been there....more

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Mar 30, 2009

Michelle rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. In The Kindly Ones, Jonathan Littell suggests that being forced to commit atrocity makes one atrocious. Although his novel is complicated by the fact that his narrator is not, at the beginning, a particularly innocent fellow, Littell seems to say that performing acts of terror brings out the terrorist in the perpetrator. In his book, a man with a dark shadow becomes a murderer when he is constantly exposed to murder upon murder upon murder, until it makes him mad.

The novel begins wi...moreIn The Kindly Ones, Jonathan Littell suggests that being forced to commit atrocity makes one atrocious. Although his novel is complicated by the fact that his narrator is not, at the beginning, a particularly innocent fellow, Littell seems to say that performing acts of terror brings out the terrorist in the perpetrator. In his book, a man with a dark shadow becomes a murderer when he is constantly exposed to murder upon murder upon murder, until it makes him mad.

The novel begins with Littell's narrator, Dr. Maximillian Aue, recounting the cold numerical facts about deaths in World War II and comes to the conclusion that during "the conflict with the USSR," which are the dates Aue uses to bookmark the beginning and the end of the program known as the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, or the Holocaust, that one person was killed every 4.6 seconds. In what has to be some of the most chilling phrases ever put to paper, Aue goes on to suggest that with those numbers one can now try to imagine how much it would take to bring about those same numbers. He belittles the Americans, who only managed to lose 50,000 troops in Vietnam in 10 years:

"that's the equivalent of a little less than 3 days and 2 hours' worth of dead on the Eastern Front."

In short, take a stopwatch, Aue says, and count out the dead, and you'll see what an accomplishment it was to murder that many people. What a feat. How much work it was. Aue then takes us on a tour of his career during his time serving the Reich to accomplish the Final Solution, as an administrator making sure that Jews were killed in the proper numbers while also making sure other bureaucratic functions were being taken care of. Aue relates the horror of life in Stalingrad: starving on little rations, the physical horror of watching endless executions, how he physically becomes ill with reflux and is constantly vomiting; how the men are constantly suffering from diarrhea. With the endless iteration of daily life Aue brings the horror right to your nose, to your skin; he literally immerses you in his day to day life, right down to taking a shit. Aue refuses to let you look away, and once you are in his life, you have to accept his truth. Too late, you begin to realize that Aue has some serious kinks in his head concerning his sister and his mother.

Littell's book has flaws. I'm not sure that his Orestes, and the Furies chasing him, are as apparent as they should be. But if you can stand to read this book, then you can stand to face the Holocaust. It took a lot of people to kill all those people, and so few people were really punished. Is our society still being pursued by the Furies of Murder? The Kindly Ones is still forcing me to ask uncomfortable questions I'm not sure I can answer yet. (less)

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Mar 17, 2009

Denis rated it

I read this book in its French original version - which is important, because many American reviews are harsh with the author's writing style, and that may be due to the translation: Littell's French is actually quite beautiful - he writes in a direct, precise, elegantly classic way, and it does perfectly serve his story as well as it fits the narrator's voice. This story is, of course, at the center of the huge controversy the novel is creating - a controversy that has exploded in every country...moreI read this book in its French original version - which is important, because many American reviews are harsh with the author's writing style, and that may be due to the translation: Littell's French is actually quite beautiful - he writes in a direct, precise, elegantly classic way, and it does perfectly serve his story as well as it fits the narrator's voice. This story is, of course, at the center of the huge controversy the novel is creating - a controversy that has exploded in every country where the book has been published, including in France, although the book won two of the most prestigious French literary prizes, and became a gigantic best-seller. Let's put it this way: The Kindly Ones is an extraordinary book, but it's also not without some flaws, and it is sometimes extremely difficult to read because of its subject matter. The Holocaust, and the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, will always remain controversial material for any book of fiction - and that's understandable. Littell, though, has done the unthinkable: he's put himself into the skin of a member of the SS, who narrates his experiences through WWII - sparing us no details of the horrendous actions the Nazis did in Ukraine or in the camps, for example, but also taking us to the siege of Stalingrad, one of the darkest hour of WWII, or to the apocalyptic fall of Germany, and, more precisely, Berlin. All those pages are so vividly written, with such an incredible and indelible sense of detail, that the reader feels he's right there, where the action is taking place. Many people have been offended by those pages - mostly the ones describing the massacres of the Jews. But the thing is, those pages describe what happened, and how it happened - not with the intellectual distance of the historian, but through the eyes of a willing participant who obliges the reader to look, and to smell, and to walk among the bodies, and not to turn away. Yes, it's hell on Earth. But these events are not fiction. The horror was real - and Littell wants us to feel it in every way. His amazing talent is to write about all this as if he had been there, at the time. It's certainly very disturbing - but Littell never excuses his anti-hero, nor does he in any way condone his actions. The author's other incredible achievement is the way he describes how the Nazi machine worked during the war: the structure in power was an amazingly complex political machine, yet Littell seems to know all there is to know about it, and he takes the reader inside that world like no other writer has done it. His novel is massive: 900 pages, and it clearly hopes to be on the level of Grossman's masterpiece Life and Fate. It comes close. I read it fast. Despite the myriads of names, actions, scenes, and the intricate details of the war events that follow each other in an unstoppable flow (there are no chapters), it never is an incomprehensible book. On the contrary. Now, of course, the question is: what has Littell tried to achieve? Everybody has an opinion on the matter. I personally believe that he has tried to show us how what happened could happen, and what kind of men (sometimes intelligent, educated, sophisticated men) did what they did. What better way to do that but to let a Nazi speak? Littell's narrator believes in Nazism, is anti-semitic, participates to the holocaust: through him, we have a glimpse of how some people can justify their actions to themselves, feel a certain way about another group of human beings, and be an active part of a repressive system. As for the capacity of violence, obviously Littell thinks that everybody has it in itself: it's not a very new idea, but he demonstrates its reality with startling effects. One problem is that the main character, Aue,happens to be a very tortured man, whose past is littered with dark secrets, and who is a psychopath: I wonder if the book would not have been stronger if Aue had been a much more ordinary man. Most Germans were. When it comes to the parts of the story that are pure fiction (Aue's past, his loves, etc), Littell's is on more shaky grounds, and is not as in control of his narration as he is when he writes about the war. He's even boring and repetitive when he goes on and on about his character's sexual fantasies. The last 100 pages suffer from those flaws. But overall, The Kindly Ones is an extremely impressive achievement, which shows us the "bowels" of the Nazi party (much more than the bowels of Nazi Germany - there is a difference) like nobody else has done it before - actually, like nobody else has ever dared doing it. It is shocking, often disgusting, and you'll have nightmares. But it is an important book. I don't think, unlike some critics, that it's an unhealthy, perverse, gross, sick novel. Quite the contrary. The tour of hell it obliges us to take is a tour of humankind at its worse, and it's essential, in our days and age, to have the courage to face what supposedly civilized people can do. Yes, the events that Littell writes about are repulsive and unbelievably horrific. But he has not invented them. He has just found a way (reprehensible, according to some) to bring us as close as possible to them, and to one of the most nightmarish moment of our History, not because he wants us to take pleasure in reading about it all (and unless you're a sick person, you won't), but to make us think. And, indeed, this book made me think like few books have. It is a very unique novel. I wouldn't recommend it to everybody, for obvious reasons. But I do believe it'll remain one of the great, even if always controversial, novels of our era.(less)

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Feb 07, 2012

Ben Dutton rated it

No recent novel has, I am certain, caused as much controversy as Jonathan Littell’s second novel, Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones), the story of Maximillian Aue, an SS Officer during the Second World War and the question of complicity. It is a provocative subject that Littell wrestles with over a thousand pages, perhaps ultimately reaching no decision, but the reader is left with the sense that, perhaps, that is the point.

Les Bienveillantes has become an international success. Litt...moreNo recent novel has, I am certain, caused as much controversy as Jonathan Littell’s second novel, Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones), the story of Maximillian Aue, an SS Officer during the Second World War and the question of complicity. It is a provocative subject that Littell wrestles with over a thousand pages, perhaps ultimately reaching no decision, but the reader is left with the sense that, perhaps, that is the point.

Les Bienveillantes has become an international success. Littell, American born but French speaking, published his novel in 2006 in France and it enjoyed immediate critical success. Probably because of its length, it has taken three years to reach British shores in an astute translation by Charlotte Mandell.

Told by Aue himself, sometime after the end of the War, when he is again living in France, Les Bienveillantes is split into seven sections, most of which take their name from the composite elements of a symphony. Near the end of the introductory first part – Toccata – Aue tells us: “I live, I do what can be done, it’s the same for everyone, I am a man like other men, I am a man like you. I tell you I am just like you!” Littell has laid the challenge down to the reader: can you sympathise with a man who does bad things? What is those bad things are done because they must be done, as part of a job, as commanded, as the only way to survive?

Aue shares little with other men, though. He is not like me, nor I suspect is he like you. To talk more fluidly about this novel I must reveal one of its big secrets, so if you have not read this novel I would suggest you cease reading now. Aue’s secrets are slowly revealed to the reader, through the slow drip of information, though long before he says what he has done, we already suspect him of it. When he was a boy Aue was banished from his family home and sent to an abusive boarding school because he was involved in an incestuous relationship with his sister. This relationship overshadows every encounter Aue has, whether they are romantic or purely sexual, and what all these relationships prove is that Aue is a repressed homosexual with a fixation on the anus. All of this reveals that he is not like every men, he is a distinct man with his own complications and fetishes. Many critics have commented that this undermines Aue and empathetic stance with him, but had Aue been a bland figure, swept along by this tide of history, I believe he would have become less empathetic – he needs these personal and social disfigurements to become real.

Again to this question of complicity. Aue says: “I too could have asked to leave… so why then didn’t I? Probably because I hadn’t yet understood what I wanted to understand. Would I ever understand it? Nothing was less certain…” What is it he needs to understand? The Reich’s policy of extermination? The human ability to kill and inflict suffering? Himself? It is perhaps all of these things, and more. It becomes the constant refrain of this novel.

Littell’s novel fetishises military terminology: “Administratively, we’re subordinated to the Sixth Army. But tactically we receive our orders from the RHSA, via the Gruppenstab, and from the HSSPF. Is that clear?” Only if we know Reich military organisational structure. It shows Littell has done his research, and at times through this novel he seems to batter us about the head with it: whether it is in military matters, historical matters, linguistic questions, anthropological questions, classical questions: Littell seems to know it all, and at times he seems to have cut and paste from an encyclopaedia all that he has learnt. I was reminded of an old creative writing class adage: do your research but don’t let your reader know you have, let it be revealed through the characters and plot. Littell wants to show us, time and again; and yet this is not a criticism. Aue is narrating long after the events, so if anybody is showing off it is Aue, for us. I think Aue is trying to tell us he considered matters, closely, by showing us how much he knows. I do not believe for a moment that Doktor Voss lectures Aue in such detail: Aue is showing off. If this is my misreading of Littell then so be it. Aue is trying to forgive himself by having us ‘understand’.

Another criticism I have is that Littell engineers his narrative in such a way that Aue is present at all the critical moments of the Reich’s War, causing at times, his narrative to resemble Zelig, the Woody Allen comedy. He’s on the front, he’s at Stalingrad, he’s at Auschwitz, he’s retreating from the oncoming Russian army, he’s in Berlin during the bombings, and he’s in Hitler’s bunker just before the end. It’s the greatest hits of the Third Reich, and at times this undermines the authenticity of Littell’s novel. Was any one man present at so much? As to the biting of the nose incident…. is this Aue trying to show us: look, I realised how wrong we were and I tried to do something. The two detectives who hunt Aue near the end also seem to appear too relentless and appear with too much ease at critical moments. The last hundred pages of his work come across more as farce than considered apologia.

My final problem Les Bienveillantes is the same problem I have with Schindler’s List and other such Holocaust works – it comes across, as David Mamet put it, of being pornography for the emotions. Littell certainly plays it up. It poses the question of whether one can truly write about such events without becoming manipulative. Okay, so Littell’s work doesn’t have such obvious symbolism or a little girl in a red coat, but he does manipulate. At times his manipulation turned my stomach. Would such tragedy be better represented by its absence? I do not mean denial, I mean in its absence but suggestion, as a ghost behind the narrative, because none of us can forget, but should the dead not be allowed to rest?

Les Bienveillantes will continue to cause academic and literary debate for some time to come, and I have not analysed it in the depth that it deserves, but these are my few thoughts upon reading it once, and quickly, written in a day of constant disruption from outside elements. Is it the great work some have hailed it? I’m uncertain. I think only time will tell. What is though is a filthy, degenerate romp through Germany’s war, and certainly worth the effort of reading, despite its problems, or perhaps, indeed, because of them.(less)

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Dec 18, 2011

Richard rated it

Rating: 3* of five

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell makes me feel deeply unclean. I don't have any idea what I would do, in the same circumstances as the author sets his protagonist into, but I suspect I would have been this protagonist had the same things happened to me at the same ages. Now...well, a 50-year-old is a different creature than a 22-year-old, no matter that us 50+ers want to think otherwise.

I abandoned this book, a library 14-day checkout, at p364. Ivan and M...moreRating: 3* of five

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell makes me feel deeply unclean. I don't have any idea what I would do, in the same circumstances as the author sets his protagonist into, but I suspect I would have been this protagonist had the same things happened to me at the same ages. Now...well, a 50-year-old is a different creature than a 22-year-old, no matter that us 50+ers want to think otherwise.

I abandoned this book, a library 14-day checkout, at p364. Ivan and Max (who is our protagonist) are scuttling around looking for Croats, and I ran aground when "Feldgendarmen" and "ACHTUNG! MINIEN!" occurred in close proximity. I just could not endure one more moment of German military terminology and I dislike the German language with sincere fervor, and then there is the slickly sickly slimy Max, with whom I can't bear to spend one more eyeblink; but good lord people, the amount I've already read would be a novel by itself!

As anyone who's ever read one of my reviews knows, I don't do book reports. The events of this book aren't in any way a surprise to you if you've been awake in the past year. I can say, though, that anyone who wants to deny the existence of a Holocaust would do well to read this novel. It feels like the events could not possibly be true. No one could live through this, perpetrator or not, and face life as a sane being ever again. So far as I am aware, the German nation did not have a huge insanity problem after WWII, so ipso facto there was no Holocaust!

Littell's story shows how well he understands the history of the (factual) Holocaust, and his choice of a protagonist shows how well he understands human nature and its strengths. It's a deeply disturbing book for that reason alone. That a man could imagine this character, could write about him in his own voice and with clarity, precision, and artistry, is unsettling to my vision of authors as refiners of reality into truth.

If Truth can contain this, there is no safe place anywhere.

And there isn't.(less)

like 2 likes

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Dec 03, 2011

mkld rated it

· review of another edition

Uno de los mejores que he leído últimamente, aunque no es un libro accesible a todo el mundo. El autor llevó a cabo una labor de documentación tan tremenda que el lector puede quedar abrumado por la cantidad de datos, las graduaciones, la terminología propia, la explicación del funcionamiento jerárquico y administrativo del régimen nazi. No obstante, debajo de esa nada despreciable información real, hay una historia que se vuelve adictiva.

Resulta interesante ver un ejemplo posible del...more

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Nov 20, 2011

Wiley rated it

Shelves: never-should-have-bought-books

I wanted to read this book for the subject matter...to perhaps get into the mind of an SS officer involved with all the atrocities. BUT, the writing style is unbearable. I've battled with this Book for over a year...picking it up, forcing myself through a chapter (when you can decipher when a chapter has begun or ended), putting it aside out of exhaustion and frustration, then picking it up a month or two later and trying once again... Rambling, excruciatingly and unnecessarily detailed and irr...moreI wanted to read this book for the subject matter...to perhaps get into the mind of an SS officer involved with all the atrocities. BUT, the writing style is unbearable. I've battled with this Book for over a year...picking it up, forcing myself through a chapter (when you can decipher when a chapter has begun or ended), putting it aside out of exhaustion and frustration, then picking it up a month or two later and trying once again... Rambling, excruciatingly and unnecessarily detailed and irrelevant. NO paragraphs...essentially stream of consciousness. Dialogue so Un-formatted that you strain to distinguish who is speaking. Horrible. I have gotten to page 476, and I am Done!!

If the author had any skill at all, beyond pounding out word after word after word, very small print and no paragraphing, and no Dialogue' format' and 1000 pages, I estimate a minimum of 700,000 words or more! The kid had to be on drugs or drunk, with no editing whatsoever.

He won a Prize for this??? With help and focus, he MIGHT have produced a 300-400 page book, maybe worthy as an Award-winning book.

The French gave this an award because:
A. It was written in French.
B. It showed bad Germans.
C. It was written by an upper-class American ex-patriate kid who probably hates his parents and America...and therefore should be Rewarded.
D. No Frenchman or French woman ever read it to the end, including the Judges I am sure.

Many reviews here at GoodReads offer the excuse that maybe "something got lost in translation"! Doh!!! The kid is an American!! If the kid had written this in English in the first place, it would NEVER have seen the light of day. In that regard, why would a publisher pay a translator to translate the English-speaking American's book from his second-language French back into HIS native English?? There is something wrong with this picture.

I seldom say this, but I wasted every penny of the money I spent on this Crap Book. I was sucked in by Good Reviews...not here, but major Reviewers, NYT, etc.

The Emperor (the writer Littell) has/had no clothes, people!(less)

· see review

Sep 25, 2011

Cynthia Davidson rated it

What a ghastly chronicle! all 972 pages...made me sick but I drank it like the strange 'medicine' it is.
Can't say I'm glad I read it, for such a story doesn't gladden one, though it can wise-up those who still so stupidly glorify war! Ought to be required reading for every recruit so they can see what they're getting themselves into, and what the minds of their officers might be like...
The symbolism and metaphors frame the 'life & death' level of existence, such as how & why one lives...more

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Sep 25, 2011

Христо Блажев rated it

Джонатан Лител вади скелети от гардероба в “Доброжелателните”: http://www.knigolandia.info/2010/01/blog...

Творба от подобен мащаб не може да бъде обхваната от един текст, от каквото и да било описание, от всякакво генерализиране. Затова още в началото ви препоръчвам да видите поне още анотацията на Преслав Ганев и тази от вестник “Капитал”. Всеки от трите текста прави различен разрез на творбата на Лител и пак само леко засяга нейната демонична същност.

“Доброжелателнит...more

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Aug 12, 2011

Janneke rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: dutch, read-in-2010

Hebben jullie dat ook wel eens met een boek, dat de inhoud zo verschrikkelijk is maar dat je toch gefascineerd door blijft lezen? Zo'n boek is - De Welwillenden - van Joanthan Littell. Ik kreeg het in november te leen van een (ex) buurvrouw. Zij had het boek voor haar verjaardag gekregen, maar was na 35 bladzijden gestopt, ze vond het vreselijk. Ik heb deze dikke pil van 962 bladzijden helemaal uitgelezen, maar wat moet je er dan over vertellen? En waar moet je beginnen? Voor de doden staat er...moreHebben jullie dat ook wel eens met een boek, dat de inhoud zo verschrikkelijk is maar dat je toch gefascineerd door blijft lezen? Zo'n boek is - De Welwillenden - van Joanthan Littell. Ik kreeg het in november te leen van een (ex) buurvrouw. Zij had het boek voor haar verjaardag gekregen, maar was na 35 bladzijden gestopt, ze vond het vreselijk. Ik heb deze dikke pil van 962 bladzijden helemaal uitgelezen, maar wat moet je er dan over vertellen? En waar moet je beginnen? Voor de doden staat er op de eerste bladzijde, dat zag ik pas later, toen waren er heel veel doden in het boek gevallen. "Mensenbroerders, laat mij u vertellen hoe het is gegaan. Wij zijn uw broeders niet, zult u antwoorden, en we willen het niet eens weten. Het is inderdaad een treurige geschiedenis, zij het ook een stichtelijke, echt een verhaal met een moraal. Wel zou het een vrij lang verhaal kunnen worden, want er heeft zich heel wat afgespeeld, maar misschien bent u niet al te gehaast, met een beetje geluk hebt u de tijd. Bovendien gaat dit alles ook u aan: u zult zien dan het ook u aangaat. En denk niet dat ik ga proberen u ergens van te overtuigen; u moet zelf maar zien wat u ervan vindt. Dat ik na al die jaren het besluit heb genomen te gaan schrijven, is om het allemaal eens helder te ordenen, voor mezelf, niet voor u." Zo sleept een al oude Max Aue je zijn verhaal binnen. En wat hij daarna vertelt is het ongelooflijke relaas van een jonge nazi die in WOII steeds meer betrokken raakt bij de vernietiging van de joden. En niet zomaar een kort verhaal, nee een smerig, verschrikkelijk en beklemmend verhaal heel nauwkeurig en precies weergegeven. Wanneer hij aan het Oostfront is (hij werkt bij de inlichtingendienst) beschrijft hij elke greppel die gegraven wordt, elke rij met joden die neergeschoten wordt en telkens opnieuw in elk dorp waar de joden uitgeroeid worden. Al lezende dacht ik na twee of drie keer dat ik nu wel wist hoe het ging, maar achteraf is me door die herhaling duidelijker geworden dat het er zo onvoorstelbaar veel zijn geweest die op deze gruwelijke wijze aan hun einde zijn gekomen. Zoals wij uit de geschiedenis wel weten zijn de Duitsers aan het Oostfront door de Russen verslagen en het was zo halverwege het boek dat Max Aue zwaar gewond naar Duitsland terugkeerde en een lange tijd nodig had om te herstellen. Het was in zekere zin een opluchting voor mij als lezer om even niet te lezen over als die verschrikkingen. En het waren niet alleen de verschrikkingen van de joden, het waren ook de verschrikkingen van de daders, van de dienstplichtige soldaten die er niet om gevraagd hadden om op weerloze mensen te schieten. Het morele verval van de Duitse troepen en de onmenselijke wreedheden die daaruit voortvloeiden werden steeds duidelijker. Hoewel er onder de officieren enkele zijn die dit opmerken wordt er weinig aan gedaan. Aue herstelt en wordt opnieuw ingezet, dit maal houdt hij zich bezig met de Arbeitseinsatz en wordt een schakel in het rad dat er voor moet zorgen dat er genoeg arbeidskrachten zijn om te oorlogsindustrie te bemannen. In het tweede deel maken we vooral kennis met de ongelooflijke bureaucratie waarmee de Duitsers de problemen aanpakten met als gevolg dat er niks werd opgelost, integendeel het werd alleen maar erger. Er zijn tegengestelde belangen, men voelt zich alleen verantwoordelijk voor de eigen taak, voor alles is toestemming nodig van een hoger geplaatste en ook de nodige machtsspelletjes beïnvloeden de oorlog op een negatieve manier. Aue was een radertje in een grote organisatie, hij onmiskenbaar een nazi, maar niet één die alle joden, zigeuners, gestoorde, gehandicapten en chronisch zieken wil uitroeien. De gaskamers waren in zijn ogen een vergissing, maar wel een noodzakelijke vergissing. De ontberingen van de gevangenen probeerde hij te verbeteren, maar dan wel met het oogmerk dat zij beter inzetbaar werden voor de oorlogsindustrie. Als de bombardementen van de geallieerden op Berlijn keer op keer beschreven worden vindt ook Aue dat het wel genoeg is zo. Om daarna verder te gaan met het beschrijven van de laatste weken van de oorlog waarin hij zich verschanst in het verlaten huis van zijn zus. Aue had niet alleen lichamelijke verwondingen opgelopen in de oorlog, maar had ook enkele jeugdtrauma's door de scheiding van zijn ouders en een verwrongen incestueuze relatie met zijn tweeling zus. Deze zaken treden het hele boek door af en toe op de voorgrond. Zo wordt ook zijn persoonlijk slagveld zichtbaar, maar toch stoorden die persoonlijke zaken mij, ik vond ze op de één of andere manier niet passen of misschien beter; niet gepast.
De Welwillenden is geschreven vanuit het perspectief van de dader, een dader die aan het begin de lezer de vraag stelt: "Wat zou jij gedaan hebben?" Een vraag die je al lezende steeds bezig houdt.
Als je tijd hebt is dit boek zeker een aanrader.(less)

· see review

Aug 08, 2011

Juan-Pablo rated it

· review of another edition

This very controversial book has already been reviewed a lot, so I won't comment on the details. I would just add that, in my opinion, this book has a lots of possible readings, and wanted to develop mine. Daniel Mendelsohn, in The New York Review of Books, has a very good article on it.

I agree with the main theses of that reviewer, that there are two superimposed structural elements in The Kindle Ones; the first is a Docudrama, with a methodical account the the years 1941-45 from a...moreThis very controversial book has already been reviewed a lot, so I won't comment on the details. I would just add that, in my opinion, this book has a lots of possible readings, and wanted to develop mine. Daniel Mendelsohn, in The New York Review of Books, has a very good article on it.

I agree with the main theses of that reviewer, that there are two superimposed structural elements in The Kindle Ones; the first is a Docudrama, with a methodical account the the years 1941-45 from a perspective of one of the perpetrators with the intended "humanization" of this process; the second is the superimposition of the Furies (Les Bienveillantes) mythology on top of the chronology. What I don't agree with is that the second structural element (the mythology) clashes and ends up by destroying any possible humanization of the "monster-main-character" as a proxy of thousands of SS and Third Reich "employees".

After finishing "Allemandes I and II" (the second long chapter) it was hard to get the point of the endless descriptions of massacres and coprophagy of the Maximilien Aue. However, as the book progresses, all this makes sense as a way of really position the memoir in the historical and moral context, a kind of necessary realism. As said earlier, the homosexual, incestuous, coprophagous, patricidal Aue (all this elements taken from the Furies mythology) has discourage many readers of any possible identification and humanization of this main character; he keeps being the "other". However this elements, as other more explicit in the novel, can also be read as an allegory, a symbol, a superimposition of a sort of spiritual chronology on top of an historical one. This does not justify the atrocities, on the contrary, it renders its huge spiritual and moral toll. The question of whether the people that committed this atrocious crimes are "normal" is only, in my opinion, marginally important. Movies like "The Reader" take on this question explicitly and have also a more simple answer.(less)

· see review

Jul 25, 2011

Sophia rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, france, historical-fiction, germany, world-war-ii

I received my copy with a note saying "great, disturbing, strange book" and I must agree that The Kindly Ones is all of the above. At over 900 pages, it's an epic fictional memoir of WWII from the perspective of Maximilien Aue, a young doctor of law who becomes a SS officer that slips away to become a lace manufacturer in France. If you like your books to be tightly edited, you most likely won't enjoy this book: it's full of long paragraphs, long chapters, and lots of details of Aue's ...more

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Feb 19, 2011

Kristina rated it

Absolutely, one of the best books I've ever read! Yes it is long, but I didn't want it to end. 975 pages that were never borring. I believe that a lot of american readers gave it more negative reviews because their historical perception of WWII is a little bit different from one of a person from Europe, I happened to be Russian born and the subject of the WWII is very close to me. I agree that this book is not for everyone, I even thought it wasn't for me when I bought it for my husband, but...more

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Feb 15, 2011

Sarah Norman rated it

I actually read this last year, but I found out at the great blog Reading Matters that it's been nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, which is for translated literature.

It's an epic (very epic, like 900 pages of epic) story of a bureaucrat's involvement in the Holocaust. I think the author (an American writing in French, impressively) intended to show how we are all potential Nazis, and he succeeds sort of. He definitely succeeds in writing an interesting, revealing, we...more

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Dec 29, 2010

Wu Ming rated it

WM1: The winner of the Prix Goncourt in 2006. A monumental debut novel* written in French by an American. A publishing sensation in several countries. A subject of surprise, shock and admiration. A cause of immense uproar on the right and on the left, by historians and critics, gentiles and jews. Why?
Because it is clear since the beginning (i.e. since the long prologue titled "Toccata") that Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones aims to be the supreme and definitive novel on Nazi German...more

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About Jonathan Littell

A bi-lingual (English / French) writer living in Barcelona. He is a dual citizen of the United States and France and is of Jewish background. His first novel written in French, Les Bienveillantes, won two major French awards.

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“I have remained someone who believes that the only things indispensable to human life are air, food, drink and excretion, and the search for truth. The rest is optional.” — 7 people liked it

“If you were born in a country or at a time not only when nobody comes to kill your wife and your children, but also nobody comes to ask you to kill the wives and children of others, then render thanks to God and go in peace. But always keep this thought in mind: you might be luckier than I, but you’re not a better person.” — 3 people liked it

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