The Kindly Ones

Apr 30, 2013 Richard rated it 3 of 5 stars

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: "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 experi...more

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Aug 13, 2012 Paul marked it as assorted-rants-about-stuff

Updated non-review

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

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.u...

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

***

update - well, this link did work once but doesn't now due to the Times' vile paywall policy. It's a shame because I have rarely seen such an eloquent demolition jopb on a piece of art. It was sheer poetry, you had to read it through your fingers....more

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Dec 26, 2009 S. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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.

The overarching historical plot works well. The protagonist, Maximili...more 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.

The overarching historical plot works well. The protagonist, Maximilien Aue, visits the 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 through 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 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 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 episode exhausts itself and Aue imagines a dead figure in the snow.

Finally, I liked the figure of 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 must be divorced from human comfort.(less)

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Oct 17, 2012 soul rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Въпреки многото изписано и филмирано по темата, тази книга е като шамар. Смилането на психиката, след което остават развалини и чудовища, вътрешната борба между човешките чувства, дълга и натрапените идеали, смъртта, безизходицата и примирението пред нея, болката, нездравите амбиции и всичко останало от пъзела на войната, предадено в подробности от първо лице, с точен, груб и нещадящ език, са шокиращи.

Книгата обаче има и слабости, неголеми, но натрапчиво чести, дразнещи и спъващи четенето (същит...more Въпреки многото изписано и филмирано по темата, тази книга е като шамар. Смилането на психиката, след което остават развалини и чудовища, вътрешната борба между човешките чувства, дълга и натрапените идеали, смъртта, безизходицата и примирението пред нея, болката, нездравите амбиции и всичко останало от пъзела на войната, предадено в подробности от първо лице, с точен, груб и нещадящ език, са шокиращи.

Книгата обаче има и слабости, неголеми, но натрапчиво чести, дразнещи и спъващи четенето (същите като във "Война и мир", които категорично ме спират да се съглася с квалификацията и на двете произведения като шедьоври):
* Излишно дълго и често отнасяне в имена, образи и случки, маловажни и без връзка със сюжета или героите. Без тези единствено приспивни отвличащи отклонения текстът би бил по-стегнат и в по-симпатичен обем страници.
* Буквално е претъпкано с абревиатури на чинове, партийни и военни организации и подразделения, повечето от които - на немски. Естествено, че са необходими, но не с такава честота. Напомня на военен рапорт, а непрекъснатото отгръщане за справка в края на книгата е неприятно.
* Предвид това, че става дума за разговори между немци (и/или австрийци), на родния им език, упражнението с оставените непреведени и в курсив немски думи, вероятно за подсилване на ефекта, губи смисъл. За тях не са чуждици, а нормална част от речника им! Някои са общоизвестни, но повечето са оставени на въображението на читателя или на желанието му да рови в речника. Говоря езика и такива абзаци на почти всяка страница дразнят и приличат на зле свършена от гугъл транслейт работа. На човек, неговорещ немски, едва ли ще му стане ясно защо например едно убийство е по-gemütlich от друго.

П.П. Тази книга би била по-сполучлива, разделена на две по-изчистени: една за войната в едър план и съпътстващите я безумия и друга, встрани от тях, за побъркващата любов и еротичните й спомени и видения.
Препоръчвам на всеки, който има необходимата доза търпение и свободно време, да прочете историите в обемния им и преплетен вариант.(less)

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soul Какво беше това фейс, м? :Р
Добре де, даже и по-хубав от онзи ще ти направя, обаче чак когато мога и аз да ям от него. :) Сега трябва само да гледам и...more
Oct 04, 2012 08:30am

soul Колибри ще са следващите, които ще отсвиря след Сиела! В средата на книгата откривам над 10 бели страници. Съответно съм си я поръчала от сайт и нямаш...more
Oct 14, 2012 02:37pm

Feb 14, 2012 Aubrey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 4-star, reviewed, translated, 1001-06-12, disturbation, bring-it-on, wwii, french, ever-on

Madness. Despicably disgustingly amazingly crafted madness. The ability of authors to write out these scenarios, diving into and drowning in the minds of the most horrific human beings imaginable, without completely losing their minds astounds me sometimes.

Maximilian Aue is just a byproduct of this whole history, if you can believe it. He starts out with horrific tendencies, to be sure (view spoiler). And...more Madness. Despicably disgustingly amazingly crafted madness. The ability of authors to write out these scenarios, diving into and drowning in the minds of the most horrific human beings imaginable, without completely losing their minds astounds me sometimes.

Maximilian Aue is just a byproduct of this whole history, if you can believe it. He starts out with horrific tendencies, to be sure (view spoiler). And then comes the war and its horrible mesh of insane procedures combined with genocide in the name of a logic that only exists in minds blinded by 'the bigger picture'. The motto of the war? It's someone else's responsibility. Every bit of it.

And the sheer idiocy of it: setting out to wipe out entire races while simultaneously saving them for an efficient work force? The entire war effort of the Germans degenerated into a paradox along these lines; at the end it became nothing more than an atrocious mess of confusion and futile attempts at maintaining order, and above all rampant killing. You look at Dr. Aue, and you look at a microcosm that contains a good deal of the horrors. The thing is, even he wasn't enough of a monster to fully appreciate them(view spoiler). One of the more completely fucked up characters of literature.

You have to appreciate the detail of the book; it's so easy to sink into the world described from every aspect of cultural/political/societal context. Of course the sick taste of madness never fully leaves the pages; the aim of the book is not to leave you comfortable. Yes, quite a bit of this book will turn your stomach. But if you condemn it solely because of that, you're missing the entire point that Germany in WWII was not a nice place. It would sicken you then, so there's no point if it doesn't sicken you now.

In a more accredited person's words:

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
-Oscar Wilde

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Sep 27, 2012 William rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I believe this book is going to become a classic. I have looked at a number of reviews and I think a lot of people are disturbed by what they read, both by the descriptions of atrocities and by Max Aue's perverted character. It is true that it is a deeply disturbing book, but this does not in any way diminish the quality of the work. There is a lot to say about "Les Bienveillantes", and I suppose that its reception will diversify with time. The main reason why its is so deeply shocking is becaus...more
I believe this book is going to become a classic. I have looked at a number of reviews and I think a lot of people are disturbed by what they read, both by the descriptions of atrocities and by Max Aue's perverted character. It is true that it is a deeply disturbing book, but this does not in any way diminish the quality of the work. There is a lot to say about "Les Bienveillantes", and I suppose that its reception will diversify with time. The main reason why its is so deeply shocking is because it explores and portrays evil both internally and externally. Max is both a common criminal, of his own volition, and a war criminal, within the context of the holocaust.

Max Aue is a subjective correlative to what is going on around him. He is as deranged mentally as the world is deranged by the Second World War and the Holocaust. Caught between an inner and outer nightmare, Max Aue has nowhere to turn but culture. He reads, he listens to classical music, he enjoys architecture. Indeed his various interests seem portrayed even naively. In addition to this, he complains about the lack of good conversation when he is trapped with less intelligent or less educated soldiers, implying a form of (self-perceived) cultural sophistication.

It is interesting to look at the people he comes close to and their occupations. Thomas is is closest friend, in the SS like him, he is alike a better version of himself, a party-going womanizer, honest, faithful an most importantly he is better at advancing his career than Max. Hohenegger is a cynical army doctor, who seems to be oblivious to the destruction and carnage around him. Voss is one of the most interesting, he is a linguist who follows Germany's invading armies into the Caucasus to study the local languages. In one particular exchange he gets angry about the lack of evidence supporting the racial theories of the Nazi regime. All three characters seems to have something that Max is missing, Thomas is a better version of himself at work, Hohenegger manages to stay aloof from the horror and Voss has more intellectual integrity.

What characterises Max is a strong sense of fate, since his childhood and his separation from his sister (with whom he had an incestuous relation) he lives his life as if it was on a determined path. This fate seems to mirror the fate of the Third Reich, advancing slowly from horrendous crimes to destruction through 900 pages of genocide and war. He is a deeply incomplete man, he has lost his father, his sister, and he hates his mother. As he notes at one point, he is lucky to be in a war without having to worry about anyone waiting for him at home, since he doesn't have one. As the plot advances, the extent of his psychopathic personality emerges, showing its full extent in the final pages.

The Holocaust is described through Max's eyes, which is all the more troubling as he is in the SD. He is a participant in the horrors of Baby Yar in Kiev and then later the concentration camp system. He does not seem particularly moved by what he sees, indeed he believes that he is just doing his job. The battle of Stalingrad and the fall of Berlin seem to be more disturbing for him, since he is on the losing side. This attitude is troubling to the reader because it makes sense from an egotistical point of view. The horror seems to touch him only when he is a potential victim. The only time he is shocked by the violence perpetrated by the Nazis is when he witnesses the death of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. He views her as a symbol of purity, and as such her death is totally pointless to him.

The only answer I could give to the people who did not like this book because of the horrors described is first, you are right to be horrified, everyone should be. But also, no one should omit that what is described happened! the Holocaust is not just a convenient German-bashing concept! The Nazi regime deliberately destroyed millions of innocent lives. Now, the repercussions of the Holocaust are not finished, for the survivors of course, but also for the rest of humanity, although maybe more so in Europe where the war was fought. The question of how we are supposed to live or how any human activity is supposed to make sense after such horror is a question that was raised by authors such as Primo levi or Jorge Semprun.

The Kindly Ones is only part of the process of trying to make sense.
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Jul 24, 2008 Thylacoleo_carnifex rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 oscuras) se ve metido en las SS justo ant...more

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Aug 18, 2012 Hadrian rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, wwii, american, french

"A new War and Peace ... Never, in the recent history of French literature, has an early work been so ambitious, so masterfully written, so meticulous in its detail or so serenely horrifying."
-Le Nouvel Observateur, taken from the back cover

“What is this shit?”
-A former French resistance fighter on this book, as quoted by Laurent Binet in The Millions

This is a book that could have been. There were brief flashes of fascination, tantalizing ideas, lost in an interminable sea of dreck.

The opening T...more

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Feb 12, 2008 Marianne rated it 1 of 5 stars · 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 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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; then it m...more

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May 12, 2009 Matt rated it 2 of 5 stars

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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Mar 03, 2009 Muriel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Dec 29, 2008 Nacho rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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, recomiendo buscar...more

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Mar 05, 2013 Saïdeh Pakravan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Les Bienveillantes
This was the original title in French, the language the book was written in and the version I read (the author is American and lives in Spain but writes in French.) It's a painful experience, gory, grotesque, subversive, terribly long. The protagonist is a monster (or is he?) and the book is unique. Much controversy has surrounded it. How could Littell, still quite young when he wrote Les Bienveillantes, know so much about anti-semitism, World War II, massacres, dark souls in d...more

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Mar 24, 2009 Sheree rated it 1 of 5 stars

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

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Jul 30, 2012 Bogdan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

за последние месяцы и даже пару лет не было романа, который бы я читал настолько долго, настолько трудно и при этом – с таким погружением и непрекращающейся оторопью, так, как может затягивать только произведение, могущее считаться именно «литературой», а не разовым развлечением.

желающие больше знать об авторе и о том, что по его поводу и по поводу романа считают другие писатели, а также исследователи, в сети без проблем найдут и его биографию, и достаточно многочисленные интервью, и мнения исс...more

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Sep 06, 2010 Ben Babcock rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 memo...more

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Jun 22, 2010 Arjen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Arjen by: Tjibbe Wubbels

Shelves: non-dutch

I got this book for my birthday. Reading the cover already got me excited and couldn't wait to start reading.

If you saw the documentary Memory of Justice by Marcel Ophuels this is a must read.

This book explores and explains why you and me are unscrupulous killers.

The book follows the career of Max Aue, an SS officer, from the invasion of Russia until the fall of Berlin. Aue is an intellectual and developed scholar and sharply describes the events that surround him and his day to day activities a...more I got this book for my birthday. Reading the cover already got me excited and couldn't wait to start reading.

If you saw the documentary Memory of Justice by Marcel Ophuels this is a must read.

This book explores and explains why you and me are unscrupulous killers.

The book follows the career of Max Aue, an SS officer, from the invasion of Russia until the fall of Berlin. Aue is an intellectual and developed scholar and sharply describes the events that surround him and his day to day activities as an SS officer. First as an officer of an Einsatkommando, later as a member of the personal staff of the Reichsfuehrer SS, Heinrich Himmler.

During his journey he meets all kinds of colourful characters and the author comments on the events by writing deeply intellectual dialogues between the protagonist and the other characters. In those dialogues Aue explores and investigates the logical consequences of the National Socialist doctrine on philosphical, political, cultural and economical levels. Passages of intellectual dialogue are alternated by delirious dreams, visions and hallucinations during moments of mental and/or physical stress and exhaustion.

One of the highlights for me was the 'interrogation' of a captured soviet propaganda officer in which the similarities between Soviet Communism and National Socialism are elaborated.

Besides the Aue's observing role in all the major events of that time (ao Kiev massacre, Stalingrad, Auschwitz, Budapest etc. etc.), there is his continual struggle with his ambivalent sexuality caused by the disturbed relation with his twin sister and his mother and stepfather.

After reading this book you'll realise we are just lucky that current circumstances didn't turn us into monsters.

Highly recommended read to anyone interested in the human mind, humanity and how cultural bias, institutions, Zeitgeist and political environment can influence those.

This is not a happy book.

On a side note: usually I am counting down the last few pages of a book. Like a book has 456 pages, you are at 444 and you're thinking 'ok, 12 more pages'. With this book, a disappointing sheet of white hit me in the face after turning the last page. It's just under 1000 pages but you'll be finished before you want.(less)

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Aug 29, 2008 Joel Grijalva rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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 impresonal (y liter...more

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Mar 16, 2009 Diane rated it 1 of 5 stars

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 5 of 5 stars

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 the future, t...more

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Jun 25, 2007 Nicholas rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 Tackabery rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 with Littell's...more 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 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 4 of 5 stars

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...more 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 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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Apr 08, 2013 Shneapfla rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Teilweise sehr interessant/gut, teilweise überflüssige Seitenfüller.

Interessant fand ich die Schilderungen über die Ereignisse und das Verhalten der Beteiligten (einige mehr (Eichmann, Höß) und andere weniger beteiligt) und die verschiedenen Stationen (der Beginn des Völkermords durch Erschießungen und bis zu den Gaskammern) des Protagonisten und seine Verhalten darauf.

Weniger interessant fand ich die Darstellung desselben als schwule, inzestuöse und mit einem Mutterkomplex beladene Kreatur (was...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Pat rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, world-war-ii

Armageddon on paper. With a strong pull to continue reading notwithstanding the continuous atrocities. See my "likes" of other reviews to know what the book is about. I have to add: some of the reflections about the reasons why the Germans tried to extinguish the Jews I have never heard or thought of before, they are the most valuable result of my lecture. Like the idea that the Germans in fact were applying the principles the Israelites in the biblical Old Testament applied to the tribes in Can...more Armageddon on paper. With a strong pull to continue reading notwithstanding the continuous atrocities. See my "likes" of other reviews to know what the book is about. I have to add: some of the reflections about the reasons why the Germans tried to extinguish the Jews I have never heard or thought of before, they are the most valuable result of my lecture. Like the idea that the Germans in fact were applying the principles the Israelites in the biblical Old Testament applied to the tribes in Canaan they invaded. A terrible thought. I also like the book because it illustrates the point Alasdair McIntyre makes in "After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory": in a so called illuminated (illumination in the sense that there is no authoritative supernatural power, i.e. no God) society the basis for ethics is power. The majority of people may decide that certain groups of humans have no right for living - to act accordingly will be considered to be a virtue. The third Reich in the way Littell describes its protagonists has demonstrated the accuracy of this theory.

What I liked, opposed to some other reviewers: the detailed descriptions of bureaucracy. To me this is one of the virtues of the book, to illustrate the absurdity of the precision with which the war and the holocaust were administrated. Another strong point is the illustration of the "human factor", how moods, personal weaknesses, character deficiencies, interpersonal conflicts, irrational reasons decided about so many important steps of war. The German translation seemed to me to be excellent. I read the book on a trip to Poland and the Ukraine where I visited a lot of the places the protagonist talks of. It was a strong experience in Auschwitz to realise again that the written word, stories have a stronger impact on your mind than to see and wander around on the actual site.

What I didn't like: A lot. The last 100-150 pages are increasingly absurd and the reason for 4 stars instead of 5. They may be justified psychologically but for my taste they change the literary level too much. The book is too much about killing, too much about disgusting sex, too much about shit and as reader you start to ask what kind of obsessions plague the author to write the book in this way? Sometimes it is also pretty obvious where the author interrupted his writing and took it up later, there are abrupt changes of style.(less)

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Nov 04, 2012 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars

The translation of Jonathan Littell’s 2006 novel Les Bienveillantes, The Kindly Ones came out in 2009 and sold over a million copies in North America. Encouraging, perhaps, that so many readers are willing to commit to a 950 page novel; but then, I have to wonder how many make it though to the end, as this is a novel that begins with compelling questions and fascinating historical detail, but spends the second half (or thereabouts) in grotesque fantasies of incest, matricide and shit, all culmin...more The translation of Jonathan Littell’s 2006 novel Les Bienveillantes, The Kindly Ones came out in 2009 and sold over a million copies in North America. Encouraging, perhaps, that so many readers are willing to commit to a 950 page novel; but then, I have to wonder how many make it though to the end, as this is a novel that begins with compelling questions and fascinating historical detail, but spends the second half (or thereabouts) in grotesque fantasies of incest, matricide and shit, all culminating in a dissatisfying ending that neither resolves - or returns - to the evocative questions of its introduction, nor offers a plausible plot resoultion.

That said, I recommend The Kindly Ones. The novel begins with Maximillan Aue - the first person protagonist - meditating on his involvement as an SS officer in the war and the Holocaust. He argues that no reader would have done anything differently, and that the extremity of the violence owes more to complicity of all normal, intelligent, rational people than it does to the psychopathic homicidal tendencies of any one. Not a new suggestion, but one worth posing at the beginning of a novel that traces the experiences of Aue and how he can - as a rational, intelligent man - participate.

The first half (or thereabouts) also sees Aue grappling with the morality of his - and the Nazis - crimes. A struggle exemplified in scenes where high commissions and panels of experts debate - using Biblical sources, linguistic analysis, food preparation and gift giving practices - whether a mountain people ought to be considered Jews or not (and thus executed). The absurdity of such a debate calls into question readers’ assumptions that all Nazis acted without consideration - if without cause. Indeed as Aue struggles with questions of responsibility, of justice and of guilt, the reader gains both an appreciation both for the ideological strength of National Socialism, and a kind of sympathy for his position - which the novel maintains, could just as easily have been us.

But following his time in Stalingrad, and a non-fatal shot the head, Aue loses his interest in debating moral questions or considering justifications for his actions, and instead devotes himself entirely to “his work.” All the while plagued by two policemen who accuse him of murdering his mother and stepfather (he did do, but in a blacked out state - a failing of the novel). He purses his work with some fervor until the fall of Berlin, when he escapes to the countryside to spend weeks smearing shit and having sex with corpses. The novel offers some limited justification for his “decent” to this kind of behaviour, alluding throughout the text to Orestes’ matricide and pursuit by the Furies (who later become The Kindly Ones). He makes it back to Berlin in time to meet Hitler (and bite his nose), and to murder his policeman pursuers, as well as his long time compatriot, Thomas. It just doesn’t make any sense. What was the policeman doing in the Berlin zoo? Or Thomas for that matter? And why all the shit and corpses and depravity? I get that it’s meant to mirror the decline of life in Berlin and the collapse of the German war effort, but all the same, it doesn’t allow for any the development of the complex questions of morality, civilization, justice and complicity raised in the first half.

Finally. I did appreciate what must have been extensive research - the novel introduced me to elements of the history I had never encountered before. Perhaps Littell would have done better to write two books, as it seems he had two different ideas for how to approach the Holocaust: moral quandary of the everyman, or pornographic violence of the man without morals at all. But as it is, he just wrote the one, and I’d say, despite it’s difficulties, its well worth the read.(less)

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Aug 31, 2012 Becky rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'm really not sure what to say about this one. Dr Aue is a Nazi bureaucrat, mostly tasked with the logistics of "The Jewish Question" who travels throughout World War Two in time and place, happening to end up at most of the crucial junctures of the conflict and meet many of the men making the critical decisions. Aue prides himself on efficiency and is incredibly monotone in his descriptions. This leaves most of the beginning of the book pretty boring, lots of lists of ranks and tactical positi...more I'm really not sure what to say about this one. Dr Aue is a Nazi bureaucrat, mostly tasked with the logistics of "The Jewish Question" who travels throughout World War Two in time and place, happening to end up at most of the crucial junctures of the conflict and meet many of the men making the critical decisions. Aue prides himself on efficiency and is incredibly monotone in his descriptions. This leaves most of the beginning of the book pretty boring, lots of lists of ranks and tactical positions, small towns in Poland and the Caucasus and long ideological conversations. It was such an enormous tome that I can't remember whether Aue somehow ended up in Stalingrad or at the concentration camps first, but as you can imagine things get pretty horrendous and the detail delivered in monotone is more effecting.

I could cope with that. I believe that these stories need to be told, that we need to remember the facts and the brutality to avoid making such enormous mistakes again. But things start to unravel in The Kindly Ones. As more is revealed about Aue's private life, Littell tries to paint him as more and more deviant. Outside of his devotion to the intricacies of his job and Nazi idealism, he was a twin, deeply in love/lust with his sister, who has since married a famous composer. He also hates his step father, who he may or may not have killed along with his mother on a trip home. We are privy to his worst sexual fantasies, his rather twisted ideas of eroticism, and way more bodily fluids and references to "my sex" than I ever imagined possible. Perhaps that's a translational quirk, but it was really irritating.

The other thing that drove me mad was the fact that when things started to really fall apart, Aue always managed to meet up with his buddies, be caught up with by the police chasing him despite Stalingrad or Berlin being blown to smithereens around him, creating a ridiculous contrived ending. I was shocked by the lack of mercy shown by the allies in the destruction of Berlin by the end, but it was the pure facts that moved me in the novel, not the awful pretentious writing and the cheap tactics of his personality traits.

I can't say any more. But this was a mission, and not particularly worth it. (less)

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Jul 29, 2012 Biblionomicon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Zwischen Pornografie und antiker Tragödie scheint nur ein schmaler Grat zu liegen. Dies zumindest legt meine zugegebenermaßen ungewöhnliche Urlaubslektüre von Jonathan Littells umstrittenen Erfolgsroman 'Die Wohlgesinnten' nahe. Erzählt wird dabei die fiktive autobiografische Geschichte von SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. Maximilian Aue, promovierter Jurist, polyglott, humanistisch gebildet, und unmittelbar an den Verbrechen des Nationalsozialismus beteiligt, die er uns Lesern aus erster Hand - und d...more

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