Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “HHhH” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

HHhH

Laurent Binet,

Sam Taylor (Translator)

4.10 · Rating details · 17,227 ratings · 2,153 reviews

Deux parachutistes tchécoslovaques envoyés par Londres sont chargés d’assassiner Reinhard Heydrich, chef de la Gestapo, chef des services secrets nazis, planificateur de la solution finale, protecteur de Bohème-Moravie, surnommé "le bourreau", "la bête blonde", "l’homme le plus dangereux du IIIe Reich". Après des mois de préparation, il est finalement abattu dans sa Merced ...more

Get A Copy

Hardcover, 330 pages

Published April 24th 2012 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux (first published January 13th 2010)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about HHhH, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

WWII Historic Fiction

1,091 books — 1,233 voters

Best World War II History (nonfiction)

581 books — 466 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 31-60

Average rating 4.10 ·

Rating details

· 17,227 ratings · 2,153 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of HHhH

Jun 14, 2017 Shawn Mooney (Shawn The Book Maniac) marked it as did-not-finish

Shelves: the-readers-podcast-recommends, did-not-finish-2017

I usually find it annoying when famous historical people show up in fiction, but when the person (Reinhard Heydrich, 'the most dangerous man in the Third Reich") and the event (his assassination in 1942) are largely unfamiliar to me, a fictionalized account is the last thing I want to read. I like my facts and my history straight up, thank you very much. Bailed less than 10% of the way in.

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

Jan 18, 2013 Jonathan Norton rated it did not like it · review of another edition

First of all let's be clear that Nazism is a terrible and pretty stupid political creed, and that the Nazis did evil things. If you're one of those people who think it is silly to use words like "evil", because the world is awfully complicated, then I suggest you explore the more sophisticated viewpoint of Primo Levi's books, where it is shown that the world is awfully complicated AND ALSO it contains evil actions and events.

I have to make that clear as my position, to avoid any misunderstanding First of all let's be clear that Nazism is a terrible and pretty stupid political creed, and that the Nazis did evil things. If you're one of those people who think it is silly to use words like "evil", because the world is awfully complicated, then I suggest you explore the more sophisticated viewpoint of Primo Levi's books, where it is shown that the world is awfully complicated AND ALSO it contains evil actions and events.

I have to make that clear as my position, to avoid any misunderstanding of what follows. I think "HHhH" is a very bad book, and the acclaim it has received is simply incomprehensible to me. It may be that Binet is badly served by his translator, but I doubt that due to a point of detail, mentioned below. The writing is wretchedly cliched and inexpressive, lapsing in to fumbling overstatement when the author isn't using the fake-humility of a meta-fictional narration of his own limitations. He wants to emphasise his research and how it constrains his ability to tell the story, but there is no requirement to tell the story in the manner of a Hollywood hack, which is all Binet has the ability for. The metafiction is mere misdirection away from talentlessness. For example, his depiction of the Night Of The Long Knives is no better than the one in honest wartime propaganda films like "The Hitler Gang". He could have found a way to talk about these characters and events without turning their world in to a creaky wooden set, but there is no sign of any effort at that. Just the lazy appeal to the framing device, and dismissal of the works of others - which backfires, in this case, since he just makes me think Vollmann's "Europe Central" might be worth reading.

For example, despite the constant mugging about the problems of research, the retelling of Heydrich's plane crash on the Eastern Front is described as involving "a Yak" - no explanation that this is a Soviet fighter series, or exactly which model it was (a Yak-1? Yak-3? Who identified it?). In his excitement of a bit of simple thriller action Binet forgets his pretentions and leaves the narrative fidgeting out. He's not an unreliable narrator, merely an incompetent one.

The most telling failure of the narrator is one which he doesn't flag himself: in section 202 he refers to "Simone Weil, an Auschwitz survivor". But Simone Weil was never at Auschwitz, she died in Britain in 1943, working for the Free French. Presumably he got her mixed up with someone else, maybe the Nazi-hunter Simon Weisenthal. He never corrects this blunder, so he must be ignorant of it which casts a new light on his claims about the depth of his knowledge. It's in the paperback edition as well, so nobody bothered to edit this text properly. The grand authorial irony is that on the opposite page Binet is sententiously quoting Pasternak about the awfulness of "indifference to truth". [BUT NOW SEE COMMENT BELOW]

Because the story of Operation Anthropoid is fascinating in itself, this book is readable in spite of its author's best, or perhaps I mean worst, efforts, and not as unendurably tedious as "Wolf Hall", that other great overpraised disaster of award-winning pseudo-serious historical writing. It's hard to understand why Martin Amis is praising this, unless he's surrendered in the war against cliche. The only connection this book has with the work of Milan Kundera is that Kundera said he hated "kitsch, not communism". This book is kitsch. At one point Binet admits that, one of his many moments of feigned self-deprecation, where he unintentionally tells the truth. ...more

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

Jan 19, 2018 Beata rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book is fascinating in its simplicity and terryfing in its depth.

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

May 07, 2016 Roger Brunyate rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, top-ten-2012, ww2, illustrated-review, holocaust, other-languages, biography-fiction

Holocaust Historiography

HHhH, or in German "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich" (Himmler's brain is called Heydrich—the letters read in German like a scurrilous laugh), is the curious title of Laurent Binet's book, which has won many prizes in France and is shortly to appear in English. A curious title for a curious book that raises some basic questions: when almost everything in it is based on fact, why was it written in the first place, and in what ways can it really be called a novel? Fortunately, ...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Aug 10, 2013 Abby rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014

Himmlers Hirn heist Heydrich. Himmler's brain is called Heydrich.

Reinhard Heydrich -- the butcher of Prague, the blond beast, the man with the iron heart – was one of the cruelest and most feared of the high-ranking Nazis. Chief of security and an architect of the final solution, he was named Reichprotector of Bohemia and Moravia, the Czech states annexed by Germany, and charged with crushing Czech resistance and all vestiges of Czech culture, “Germanizing” the desirable population and eliminat Himmlers Hirn heist Heydrich. Himmler's brain is called Heydrich.

Reinhard Heydrich -- the butcher of Prague, the blond beast, the man with the iron heart – was one of the cruelest and most feared of the high-ranking Nazis. Chief of security and an architect of the final solution, he was named Reichprotector of Bohemia and Moravia, the Czech states annexed by Germany, and charged with crushing Czech resistance and all vestiges of Czech culture, “Germanizing” the desirable population and eliminating the undesirables. On May 27, 1942, as he was being driven to work in Prague in an open black (or possibly dark green) Mercedes convertible, he was the subject of an assassination attempt by Jan Kubiš, a Czech, and Jozef Gabčik, a Slovak, who had been trained for their mission in London and parachuted into Czechoslovakia several months earlier. “Operation Anthropoid” didn't go off exactly as planned but the reprisals were as brutal as might have been expected.

The narrator of “HHhH,” who may be the author, has spent years studying Operation Anthropoid – it would be fair to say he is obsessed with it – and in telling the story presents a parallel narrative about his struggles with how to tell the story. While the digressions might be expected to be distracting, the opposite is true. The narrator's eureka moments when he unearths a key book, his decisions on what to include and exclude, his commentary on other novels based on historical fact, his musings on what drives people to extraordinary acts of cruelty and heroism serve to bring us closer to the story. And when it counts most, as the Mercedes approaches the bend in Holešovice Street where the assassins are waiting, he lets the story take over and propel us forward as if we don't know what will happen.

At the end of the book, our narrator tells us that Kubiš and Gabčik are today viewed as heroes, celebrated in their homeland. But he describes himself as worn out by his “muddled efforts” to pay tribute to the many people who helped the assassins at great risk and great cost and who remain largely unknown. “...I tremble with guilt at the thought of all those hundreds, those thousands, whom I have allowed to die anonymously. But I want to believe that people exist even if we don't speak of them.” Laurent Binet has spoken of them and has given us a novel that is both suspenseful and profound. Highly recommended.
...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Mar 13, 2018 Jelena Nemet rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: world-war-ll, favorites

When I watch the news, when I read the paper, when I meet people, when I hang out with friends and acquaintances, when I see how each of us struggles, as best we can, through life’s absurd meanderings, I think that the world is ridiculous, moving, and cruel. The same is true for this book: the story is cruel, the protagonists are moving, and I am ridiculous. But I am in Prague.

I fear that I am in Prague for the last time. The stone ghosts that people the town surround me, as always, with their ...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Jan 06, 2013 Peter Idone rated it it was ok

I have no problem with an author injecting himself into his novel as an attempt to write a pure and vital work of historical fiction or any fiction for that matter-post modern or otherwise(otherwise being an infranovel as Binet describes what he's writing in Section 205) Unfortunately I found this author too whining in tone and not at all as clever when described by reviewers in the NYT, the Guardian, etc. It was a disappointment and I'm almost sorry to have to say this.There were passages that ...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Oct 30, 2015 Lubinka Dimitrova rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history-non-fiction, award-winning, green-monster-of-jealousy, wwii-nazi, audio, based-on-real-events, heartwrenching, male-author

Although certain quirks of the writer's style annoyed me immensely, I can say in all honesty that I rather enjoyed the book (if one can "enjoy" a book with a subject like that). I could do without the personal remarks about the writing process and the author's struggles, and I didn't really appreciate the uber-short chapters, but all in all, in the end, strangely enough, I actually liked the final result, and I'll definitely be on the watch for more of Laurent Binet's work. He managed to give li ...more

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

Feb 14, 2018 Anna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, fiction, wwii, books-about-books

I decided to read ‘HHhH’ after absolutely adoring The Seventh Function of Language. This is a very different sort of book - it isn’t unremittingly hilarious, for a start, not that you would expect it to be given the subject matter. Having read it, I now understand why the library catalogue had it listed as fiction yet shelved as non-fiction. (Quite proud that I nonetheless tracked down a copy.) The classification is by no means simple. Perhaps ‘HHhH’ is a non-fiction book about writing a novel a I decided to read ‘HHhH’ after absolutely adoring The Seventh Function of Language. This is a very different sort of book - it isn’t unremittingly hilarious, for a start, not that you would expect it to be given the subject matter. Having read it, I now understand why the library catalogue had it listed as fiction yet shelved as non-fiction. (Quite proud that I nonetheless tracked down a copy.) The classification is by no means simple. Perhaps ‘HHhH’ is a non-fiction book about writing a novel about actual events. Or maybe it is a fictionalisation of actual events that includes author interjections on the subject of writing. Then again, it could be a non-fiction history that discusses its uncertainties and extrapolations more honestly than most? It certainly causes the reader to contemplate the nature of historical narratives, whether they are presented as fiction or fact.

I found that the short chapters and lack of page numbers took a little getting used to, however once accustomed to them I was immersed. The subject of the book is the 1942 plot to assassinate Heydrich, an important Nazi and one of the architects of the Holocaust. My ignorance of whether the plot actually succeeded (view spoiler) certainly built tension. Binet takes a winding route to the climactic events, pondering the morality of who and what to include and reflecting on other WWII novels and films. These include Littell's The Kindly Ones, a novel that made a great impression on me. He comments that the Nazi narrator exhibits a detached, ironic, postmodern mindset, rather than the hysterical fanaticism of the time. This is a valid point, although the Houellebecq comparison is a bit harsh. I found The Kindly Ones infinitely more powerful and insightful than anything I’ve read by Houellebecq.

That digression demonstrates that ‘HHhH’ is about historiography as well as history. Not in an academic sense, as Binet’s tone is conversational, but it raises very interesting questions about how we describe and understand the past. While doing so, it also tells a deeply exciting and powerful story. By the end, I could hardly believe such outlandish events actually happened. Binet is careful to avoid cliches about truth being stranger than fiction, though. Although the book is essentially structured around the assassination plot, it takes in wider events in occupied Czechoslovakia and beyond. I particularly appreciated Binet’s deliberate willingness to highlight where events were uncertain and motives unknown. And also agreed with this comment: ‘Sport? What a load of fascist rubbish it is.’ Whilst I didn’t love ‘HHhH’ as I loved The Seventh Function of Language, I found it a fascinating, involving, and original read. ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

May 25, 2013 Louise rated it it was amazing

Author Laurent Binet has a whole new take on the "true life novel". He writes of himself researching the novel and making decisions on dialog, relationships, clothing and ambiance. He tells us when he inserts his original unrelated vignettes and when he puts in extraneous information because it is interesting to him. As Binet explains, a scriptwriter makes the content judgments in every scene. Why can't a novelist?

If you are unfamiliar with Reinhard Heydrich (Hitler's puppet in Czechoslovakia) ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Jan 15, 2017 Gumble's Yard rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

Novel chronicling the assassination of (Himmlers brain called) Heydrichs, the architect of the final solution by two Czech partisans. The story is told in 300+ short chapters varying from a paragraph to 2-3 pages and in a consciously post-modern style; the book is as much about writing in general (particularly the challenges of verisimilitude/complete adherence only to known facts in historical fiction) and the author's research for and writing of this book, as it is about the story.

The stronge ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Jan 16, 2013 Judy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 21st-century-fiction, tournament-of-books, historical-fiction

Facts: Laurent Binet is French. This is his debut novel and won the Prix Goncourt for a first novel in 2010; the French equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. The book I read is translated from French and is on the Tournament of Books list for 2013.

Opinions: Anyone who can write a historical novel set during World War II and do something new is alright with me. Laurent Binet bravely, perhaps recklessly, put himself as author into the story, all very meta-fiction, and created an absorbing read.

It was ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Dec 20, 2012 Andy Schultz rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: tob2013

If you want to write historical fiction, write historical fiction.
If you want to write a history, write a history.
If you want to write a memoir, write a memoir.

Don't jam all three together and call it a novel.

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Jan 17, 2013 Jenne marked it as didnt-finish · review of another edition

Shelves: tournament-of-books

I don't know what the title means...but coincidentally it is also the sound I made when I thought about having to read any more of it.

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

May 20, 2017 Liz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, war

I never would have read this book, if it wasn’t for my work colleague, Jozsef, who I would describe as enigmatic and one of those uniquely intelligent people. My conversations with him are always falling into the debate category and I always learn a new angle to any topic after a discussion with him. He kindly sent me the book to read and he reread it himself so we could have a chat about it when we met for a company meeting. I guess, in a way I can tick a box for a buddy read- job well done!

And ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Nov 06, 2012 Simon rated it it was ok

This meta-novel about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich is good, but not great. The story of the assassination and the story of Heydrich's life more generally are well told and engaging enough, but less engaging are Binet's digressive commentaries on the difficulty of writing historical fiction. Now, that's not to say that these digressions are bad, I'm just not sure they're as radical as Binet seems to think they are. I'm also not sure they're entirely appropriate for a story in which the This meta-novel about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich is good, but not great. The story of the assassination and the story of Heydrich's life more generally are well told and engaging enough, but less engaging are Binet's digressive commentaries on the difficulty of writing historical fiction. Now, that's not to say that these digressions are bad, I'm just not sure they're as radical as Binet seems to think they are. I'm also not sure they're entirely appropriate for a story in which the Holocaust is the backdrop.

As someone who, at least in part, "does history" for a living, I love meta-critical historiographical reflections on the production of texts, so I appreciate what Binet is going for, but his observations are often a little trite and obvious. I don't want to be mean, or to sound like an academic snob (even if that's what I am) but the book comes across as written by someone who took a single undergraduate course in post-modern literary theory. There's a dash of Barthes, maybe some Derrida, maybe even some Carlo Ginzburg, but not much interesting work actually done with any of them. Binet's discussion of other representations of Heydrich and the assassination is illustrative of this point. Neither the writing of fiction nor the writing of history happens in a vacuum, so it was interesting to see Binet explicitly reference other representations/iterations that might have shaped his own text. However, beyond mentioning his watching or reading of these other films/texts/sources/representations, Binet never really engages with the extent to which they might have influenced his authorial choices. An argument about intertextuality and iterability is invoked, but in a superficial sense only. It is not actually engaged with in any meaningful sense.

Also, for someone who should be aware of the necessary partiality of any written account of an "event," Binet seems pettishly concerned with "accuracy." His attempt to construct a narrative out of primary source materials leads him to rather fixate on "details," and he thereby falls prey to the oldest problem in the history of, well, history: the fetishization of the archive. It seems that, for Binet, some texts about Heydrich and the assassination are unimpeachably "true." This is a judgement which, as any good post-modernist knows, is based on the operations of authority and power. Okay, so everyone who writes history has to make a judgement as to the adequacy of the available sources, but Binet seems to uncritically reproduce the operations of power by accepting certain sources as canonical while rejecting others, even as he reflects on the difficulty of writing history. I got the sense that, underneath it all, writing a good history for Binet actually meant writing something as accurate as possible (which makes it a little surprising that he makes a couple of minor and superficial errors about certain details, such as the colour of Heydrich's uniform.) It also rather begs the question of why, being obsessed with the presentation of details, he tried to narrativize history in the form of the novel, a form not known for its slavish devotion to accuracy.

In a way, then, the book is much more about Binet's discomfort with writing historical fiction than it is about Heydrich, his assassination, or the Holocaust, and I'm just not sure that's a defensible position. Should the Holocaust, and the life and death of its principal technician, be merely the event/figure through which an author works out his own unease with the issues of representation, fiction, and history generally? By devoting roughly half of a book ostensibly about the Holocaut and Heydrich to a reflexive account of the book's own production, is Binet leaving himself open to the charge that he equates the importance of the two? Who is the hero of this text, the Resistance fighters who assassinated Heydrich, or Binet, heroically trying to tell their story?

I understand what Binet is trying to do, I think. He's trying to say that it really does matter that events like the Holocaust are understood and represented as precisely as possible, and that this is a herculean task. But, can an author ever really represent the Holocaust, or Heydrich's evil? If so, can an author ever, in good conscience, choose the form of the adventure novel as that through which to represent it? Or do the conventions of that genre preclude the presentation of this particular content in this particular form? I don't know, and I don't think Binet does either, and while I enjoyed his attempt to figure it out, I found it all a little sophomoric, and a bit too queasily self-congratulatory, especially in its false modesty. ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Jun 25, 2016 Roman Clodia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

"How many forgotten heroes sleep in history's great cemetery?... Memory is of no use to the remembered, only to those who remember. We build ourselves with memory"

This is a brilliant, devastating book, almost unbearable in parts, that tells the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, and the courage of the Czech Resistance. What makes it, however, stand out from so many other stories of valour and defiance against Nazi totalitarianism is Binet's self-conscious struggle with how to tell "How many forgotten heroes sleep in history's great cemetery?... Memory is of no use to the remembered, only to those who remember. We build ourselves with memory"

This is a brilliant, devastating book, almost unbearable in parts, that tells the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, and the courage of the Czech Resistance. What makes it, however, stand out from so many other stories of valour and defiance against Nazi totalitarianism is Binet's self-conscious struggle with how to tell this story while maintaining a respect for history and the real people contained within it, without reducing them to fictional characters in a novel. His solution, partial as it may be as he himself admits, is to make this into a novel about an author wrestling to write the story we are reading. It's not so much that this is metafiction (his story, after all, is true) but a form of metahistory that succeeds in challenging how we think about historical narrative.

The book, then, probes the way we can only ever access `history' through stories: not just previous books, but oral testaments, eye witness accounts, even primary documents none of which are ever neutral or without an agenda, even an unconscious one. Binet - or, rather, his unnamed narrator - draws playful attention to the way in which all narratives are forced to make choices of what to put in, what to leave out, so that they are always contingent and, necessarily, incomplete. At the same time, he evinces an unease about how far a writer can imagine what `really' happened, before that imagining becomes an untruth, a betrayal of the real people whose lives become subsumed in, and subsidiary to, the novel.

This is a book very much formed by a French post-war intellectual environment (Binet was born in 1972) and which is profoundly influenced by the writings of people like Derrida, Barthes (who gets a name-check at the end) and Foucault. It has a kind of Puck-like mischievous impishness at times that is very Gallic in tone but which manages to sit comfortably with the sometimes unbearable intensity of the story being told.

This feels like a book which could not have been written by an English author, that it springs from France's own not-forgotten history of Nazi Occupation and the French Resistance, the post-war struggle to accommodate collaboration, and the negotiations of the French Left to understand what it means to be a socialist republic while maintaining an independence from what was Russian communism.

But for all the intellectualism at work here, this isn't a cold or clever-clever book at all, and the heartfelt emotion seeps out especially towards the end: "worn-out by my muddled efforts to salute these people, I tremble with guilt at the thought of all those hundreds, those thousands, whom I have allowed to die in anonymity. But I want to believe that people exist even if we don't speak of them".

I read a lot but this is a truly stand-out piece of work - an unequivocal 5 stars.

ps. The assassination of Heydrich and the aftermath is treated very differently but just as movingly in The Visible World (2008) which is dedicated to 'the seven in the church'. ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Jun 21, 2012 Matt Brady rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2014

Reinhard Heydrich. Chief of the German Reich's security and intelligence forces (Basically. I'm glossing over his actual title and responsibilities but that's about the size of it). Key planner of both the Night of the Long Knives and Krystallnacht. Himmler's right-hand man. Architect of the Nazi's Final Solution. Protector (Tyrant is probably the better word) of Bohemia and Moravia. The Blond Beast. The Hangman of Prague. "Heydrich is Himmler's brain," the SS would say, or HHhH in German. A man Reinhard Heydrich. Chief of the German Reich's security and intelligence forces (Basically. I'm glossing over his actual title and responsibilities but that's about the size of it). Key planner of both the Night of the Long Knives and Krystallnacht. Himmler's right-hand man. Architect of the Nazi's Final Solution. Protector (Tyrant is probably the better word) of Bohemia and Moravia. The Blond Beast. The Hangman of Prague. "Heydrich is Himmler's brain," the SS would say, or HHhH in German. A man that Hitler himself once described as "the man with the iron heart". Known to many as "the most dangerous man in the Third Reich". Think about that. In an assembly of some of history's greatest monsters, Heydrich stood head and shoulders above the rest.

Or at least he did. Until he got his no-good nazi arse blown up in a stunning act of resistance carried out by three brave citizens of the country he ruled with an iron fist.

It's an incredible story (and I can already imagine the author, Binet, gritting his teeth at that word, "story") of an incredible time, but Binet isn't just writing a straightforward historical account here. "I can't tell this story the way it should be told," Binet confesses at one point. "This whole hotchpotch of characters, events, dates, and the infinite branching of cause and effect - and these people, these real people who actually existed." This is a book about the assassination of a monstrous man, an act of Czechoslovakian Resistance that would ring out across the ages, but it's also a book about writing a book. It's about the way we tell a story. It's about how we take events, real historical events, and turn them into myths and legends.

But this isn't a cheap meta gimmick. This is something that matters to Binet. He's passionate about this story, which he heard at a young age and which has captivated him ever since, and he agonises over the right way of telling it. And rather than hide the process from us, the readers, he puts it all on the page. He invents dialogue, and then immediately chastises himself for it. He prevaricates with hair-pulling frustration over whether Heydrich's car, the one he was driving when he was killed, was black or dark green. He laments the dozens, perhaps hundreds of stout members of the Czech Resistance who all played a part in this mission and who go unacknowledged, and the tens of thousands who suffered for it.

Maybe a story can never truly pay full tribute to the reality of what actually happened. Maybe, as Binet himself wonders, it's vulgar to even try. But at the same time, there's power in stories. They grab our attention. They engage our imagination. For Binet, this story is a part of him. And now, I guess, it's a part of me too. ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Mar 11, 2019 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it it was ok

Shelves: library, world-war-two, twenty-first-century

In Angel, Elizabeth Taylor presents a very selfish, self-centered character who happens to be an author. Although we are not treated to any of her writing, nothing would indicate that Angel's books are filled with herself. HHhH is the opposite. While we learn nothing of the author himself, this book is simply filled with Binet's egocentric ramblings about how he is going about writing his novel. Every author worthy of print labors over his work. It shouldn't be more than half the pages his telli ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

May 03, 2012 Susan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

In the SS they said, "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich", the initials in German spell HHhH, hence the title of this book. It is Prague, it is 1942 and two Czechoslavakian parachutists are sent by England to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich; the "blonde beast", "the butcher of Prague". The Czech government in exile are under pressure to compete with the resistance groups in France and elsewhere and, despite misgivings, there can be no greater target than this.

We all know the story, we all, sadly, ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Jul 15, 2012 Jonfaith rated it liked it

Jean Echenoz's novel Lightning rested close to my mind's eye as I crept through HHhH. Much as Echenoz created an almost strophic life of Tesla which still hummed like one of the Serb's coils, Binet addresses the assassination of Heydrich in Prague during the Second World War. Binet begins his account with a constant rapping of the fourth wall and an incessant imploring of his disgust with description in novels, apparently Binet also loathes historical fiction; why shove dramatic words into real ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Sep 05, 2012 Stephen rated it liked it · review of another edition

This should really be a 4 star book - story of Heydrich's assassination is fascinating and told in detail here together with other information on Heydrich's life and how the war affected Czechoslovakia. Heydrich was seen even by Hitler himself as his successor so this was a key event in the war, but the assassination had terrible repercussions for the Czech people.

The problem that I had with the book was the style of writing - it is written as if the author is chatting to you as he writes the b ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Nov 24, 2013 Kamil rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-books, non-fiction, favorites, 2013

HHhH sucked me in like none of the books I’ve been reading this year. It’s a charming, companionate story of Czech underground fighters that went on a mission to kill Reinhardt Heydrich and it’s also the memoir of the author working on the book.
I liked the meta aspect of HHhH, I found it well fitting with the way story was told. It wasn’t overly intellectualized for me as very often people tend to point out. While interested in the process of writing, it was an additional advantage of this grea ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Sep 17, 2017 Eric rated it liked it

Shelves: ficciones, bagatelle, mitteleuropa

The thriller is excellent, "unputdownable." The portrait of the writer writing - the essay of the scrupulous novelist working around the traditional traps of historical dramatization - is weak, somewhat puerile, and at moments weirdly self-pitying. ("How do I dare write of these enormities, when I'm just MEEE!") I expected that in the work of a French writer, the styles would be more strongly combined, what with Michon and Echenoz as contemporary examples. Still, I'm looking forward to his Barth ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Jul 18, 2018 Rita Costa (Lusitania Geek) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It was entertaining to read this book. As im a fan of WWII, i decided to give a go to read this one....and I did not regret it !

It was original the Binet’s writting (captivating) about one the darkest times of our history. It really makes you want to know more and more on the events he describes, the moments, stories and places that we probably heard it during history classes or tv shows about Nazism. It’s a good book if you want to learn more about Nazism, Himmler and Heydrich, the main archit ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Dec 18, 2012 LindaJ^ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, holocast, wwii, translation

This book has been sitting on my TBR shelf for 3-4 years. I grabbed it as I left the house to catch a flight because it was lightweight. I had forgotten what it was about and why I had bought it. Well, I now know what it is about and that may be why I bought it - I am somewhat obsessed with reading books that concern WWII and the Holocaust, fiction or non-fiction.

In the fall of 2014, my husband and I visited Prague for a few days during the fortnight between two bicycling tours - one of the Mos This book has been sitting on my TBR shelf for 3-4 years. I grabbed it as I left the house to catch a flight because it was lightweight. I had forgotten what it was about and why I had bought it. Well, I now know what it is about and that may be why I bought it - I am somewhat obsessed with reading books that concern WWII and the Holocaust, fiction or non-fiction.

In the fall of 2014, my husband and I visited Prague for a few days during the fortnight between two bicycling tours - one of the Mosel Valley and one from Prague to Vienna. We started in Munich, where we did the Third Reich walking tour for the third time; we visited Nurnberg, where we went to the Nazi parade ground and associated museum; we visited Dresden, where we did a walking tour of the city and heard about the it's almost total destruction by Allied bombs. Then we arrived in Prague. One day, we did a walking tour of Prague in which we asked the guide to focus on the city's history from the period leading up to WWII and after. We visited the church where the parachutists died. The next day we visited the Lidice Memorial and Terezín (city and camp).

As I read this book, I could see the streets, the squares, and the bridges of Prague. I remembered the now building-less fields of what used to be Lidice and the excellent museum that is now at the site that tells the story of what happened (including videos of interview of those few children, now old, who were sent to German families to be raised). I remembered the church and its exhibition of the assassination of Heydrich. And, that is, perhaps, what is most important -- to remember what happened; to remember the bravery of the parachutists, those who helped them, and those who were slaughtered just because someone had to pay.

The book is full of details I did not know. Details that make the story more immediate, rather than just history. It ranges beyond the story of the assassination to bring in material that helps fill the background. Interestingly, the author makes his writing of the novel, part of the story. And while at first that was a bit detracting, I came to appreciate it. It was like being with him as he discovered information, read what others had written, and wondered about what the real story was. What I appreciated most of all was the respect he gave to all, named or nameless, who suffered and died because of the Blond Butcher.
...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Oct 09, 2012 S. rated it really liked it

Shelves: recommended-novels, war, wwii-holocaust, read-in-2012, german-ic-y

HHhH was terrific. It’s hard to recommend to just anyone because it’s best to be a little familiar with the figure of Reinhard Heydrich and his assassination to appreciate the book. But even Wikipedia could equip a reader sufficiently.

As meta-fiction the author is very in the book, which pretty much goes ‘here’s this event I’ve been obsessed with my whole life, which happened in my favorite country on earth, and the two or three guys who are my heroes, who set off to kill Heydrich, the devil in ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Apr 27, 2013 Mary Slowik rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: History buffs and writers

Shelves: war, french, borrowed, fiction, genre-benders, holocaust, memoir, historical-fiction, experimental

"I think I'm beginning to understand. What I'm writing is an infranovel."

Amazing. I went in expecting a straightforward historical fiction novel about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich-- the Butcher of Prague-- by a pair of paratroopers, one Czech and one Slovak (an excellent story in its own right). What I did not expect was having the process of writing the novel woven into the novel itself, seamlessly, with Binet-- a teacher by profession-- detailing his neurotic fidelity to known, prova ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Dec 16, 2016 Ana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: absolute, about-murders, history, law-abiding-citizen, page-turner, war-stories, racism, somehow-societal, non-fiction

"Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich", (Himmlers brain is called Heydrich) that is the meaning of the title. One of the best books I've read on a single event in history, especially about Nazi Germany officials. I will forgive some of what I consider to be narrating mistakes on the part of the author because he erased any sins through the 5 or 6 pages describing the actual assasination episode, as well as the following episodes detailing the assassin's deaths. Really gripping writing, read it one sitti ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Jan 14, 2013 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: aa-germanylit, aa-francelit, translation, historicity, pomo, aa-europelit, all-five-star, nonfiction, thrillers, aaa-top-translation

this is too good, have only read it this one time in one sitting! do not know what to say, only that everyone should read this, however familiar you might be with this history. read a review, which gave some unannounced spoilers, but was still caught up in the tale, still knew the end. it is not the plot but also how it is told. conversational, self-aware, the fact it is not and is fiction or nonfiction... this is an unflinching, sharp, horrifying story of history never to be forgotten.

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Madison Mega-Mara...: #90 - HHhH (yes, that's really the title of a book!)	1	4	Oct 01, 2014 02:05AM
The Readers: Book #14; HHhH - Laurent Binet (Oct 2013)	3	62	Nov 08, 2013 06:05AM
Goodreads Librari...: ebook to hardcover	5	31	Jul 19, 2013 10:22AM
21st Century Lite...: HHhH - An Unreliable Narrator, or a Comment on Human Nature? (April 2013)	14	86	May 12, 2013 08:24AM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Fiction

388 users

Historical > Historical Fiction

362 users

War

142 users

War > World War II

108 users

Cultural > France

98 users

See top shelves…

About Laurent Binet

Laurent Binet

397 followers

Son of an historian, Binet was born in Paris, graduated from University of Paris in literature, and taught literature in Parisian suburb and eventually at University. He was awarded the 2010 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman for his first novel, HHhH.

Laurent Binet est né à Paris. Il a effectué son service militaire en Slovaquie et a partagé son temps entre Paris et Prague pendant plusieurs années. Ag ...more