The Kindly Ones

Named one of the "100 Best Books of the Decade" by The Times of London "Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened." A former Nazi officer, Dr. Maximilien Aue has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. An intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music, he is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Eichmann, Himmler, GÖring, Speer, Heydrich, HÖss—even Hitler himself—play a role in Max's story. An intense and hallucinatory historical epic, The Kindly Ones is also a morally challenging read. It holds a mirror up to humanity—and the reader cannot look away.

Literature & Fiction

LITTELL, JONATHAN

Literary

Harper

“Simply astounding. . . . The Kindly Ones is unmistakably the work of a profoundly gifted writer.” — Time 
A literary prize-winner that has been an explosive bestseller all over the world, Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones has been called “a brilliant Holocaust novel… a world-class masterpiece of astonishing brutality, originality, and force,” and “relentlessly fascinating, ambitious beyond scope,” by Michael Korda (Ike, With Wings Like Eagles). Destined to join the pantheon of classic epics of war such as Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, The Kindly Ones offers a profound and gripping experience of the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust.

The Kindly Ones: A Novel

United States

Harper-perennial

Bad Voltage

Roc+

Littell, Jonathan / Mandell, Charlotte (translator). The Kindly Ones. First Edition. London, Chatto & Windus, 2009. 16 cm x 24 cm. 984 pages. Original hardcover with original dustjacket in protective Mylar. Excellent condition with only very minor signs of external wear. Includes for example the following chapters: Toccata / Allemandes I and II / Courante / Sarabande / Air / Gigue / Glossary / Table of Ranks etc. Dr Max Aue is a family man and owner of a lace factory in post-war France. He is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a former SS intelligence officer and cold-blooded assassin. He was an observer and then a participant in Nazi atrocities on the Eastern Front, he was present at the siege of Stalingrad, at the death camps, and finally caught up in the overthrow of the Nazis and the nightmarish fall of Berlin. His world was peopled by Eichmann, Himmler, Goring, Speer and, of course, Hitler himself. Max is looking back at his life with cool-eyed precision; he is speaking out now to set the record straight. (Publisher)

Chatto&Windus

Told from the point of view of the executioner and in his voice The Kindly Ones evokes in graphic detail the horrors of Babi Yar, Stalingrad, Auschwitz, and the fall of Berlin in 1945. Massive in scope, horrific in subject matter and shocking in its protagonist, critiques have compared this provocative and controversial work of literature to Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Genre Fiction

London: Chatto & Windus

“Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened.” Dr. Max Aue, the man at the heart of Jonathan Littell’s stunning and controversial novel The Kindly Ones, personifies the evils of the Second World War and the Holocaust. Highly educated and cultured, he was an ambitious SS officer, a Nazi and mass murderer who was in the upper echelons of the Third Reich. He tells us of his experience during the war. He was present at Auschwitz and Babi Yar, witnessed the battle of Stalingrad, and survived the fall of Berlin — receiving a medal from Hitler personally in the last days of Nazi Germany. Long after the war, he is living a comfortable bourgeois life in France, married with two children, managing a lace factory. And now, having evaded justice, he speaks out, giving a precise and accurate record of his life. The tone of his account is detached, lapidary, and for the most part unrepentant, whether he is describing his participation in mass murder on the Eastern Front, his bureaucratic investigations of labour productivity in the death camps, his casual murder of civilians as he tries to break through Russian lines towards the end of the war, or his fervid and convoluted relationship with his twin sister. Over its course, by entwining Aue’s life with those of historical figures such as Eichmann and Speer, Himmler and indeed Hitler, The Kindly Onescomes to depict the entire architecture of Nazism — from its grandest intellectual pretensions to its most minute, most chilling managerial details and executions. The Kindly Onespresents — with unprecedented realism, meticulous research that is both fascinating and compelling, and brilliant literary accomplishment — the greatest horrors imaginable. “War and murder are a question, a question without an answer, for when you cry out in the night, no one answers,” Aue says. In the same way, this powerfully affecting, powerfully challenging book confronts the reader with the most profound questions about history, morality, and art without offering any easy resolution. Written originally in French, and published now in English for the first time, The Kindly Ones has already sold to date well over a million copies in Europe. In France it won two prestigious prizes, including the Goncourt, and has been compared to War and Peace and other great classics of literature.

MCCLELLAND STEWART

“Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened.” Dr. Max Aue, the man at the heart of Jonathan Littell’s stunning and controversial novel The Kindly Ones, personifies the evils of the Second World War and the Holocaust. Highly educated and cultured, he was an ambitious SS officer, a Nazi and mass murderer who was in the upper echelons of the Third Reich. He tells us of his experience during the war. He was present at Auschwitz and Babi Yar, witnessed the battle of Stalingrad, and survived the fall of Berlin — receiving a medal from Hitler personally in the last days of Nazi Germany. Long after the war, he is living a comfortable bourgeois life in France, married with two children, managing a lace factory. And now, having evaded justice, he speaks out, giving a precise and accurate record of his life. The tone of his account is detached, lapidary, and for the most part unrepentant, whether he is describing his participation in mass murder on the Eastern Front, his bureaucratic investigations of labour productivity in the death camps, his casual murder of civilians as he tries to break through Russian lines towards the end of the war, or his fervid and convoluted relationship with his twin sister. Over its course, by entwining Aue’s life with those of historical figures such as Eichmann and Speer, Himmler and indeed Hitler, The Kindly Ones comes to depict the entire architecture of Nazism — from its grandest intellectual pretensions to its most minute, most chilling managerial details and executions. The Kindly Ones presents — with unprecedented realism, meticulous research that is both fascinating and compelling, and brilliant literary accomplishment — the greatest horrors imaginable. “War and murder are a question, a question without an answer, for when you cry out in the night, no one answers,” Aue says. In the same way, this powerfully affecting, powerfully challenging book confronts the reader with the most profound questions about history, morality, and art without offering any easy resolution. Written originally in French, and published now in English for the first time, The Kindly Ones has already sold to date well over a million copies in Europe. In France it won two prestigious prizes, including the Goncourt, and has been compared to War and Peace and other great classics of literature. From the Hardcover edition.

Emblem Editions

A critical biography of Belgium's highest-ranking Nazi collaborator, Léon Degrelle, who fought with the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front during the Second World War and served as inspiration for the protagonist of Jonathan Littell's bestselling, Prix Goncourt-winning novel The Kindly Ones ([Gallimard 2006] HarperCollins 2009). Originally published in French as Le sec et l'humide: Une brève incursion en territoire fasciste (Gallimard 2008) and translated into Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Czech, Catalan, and now English, The Damp and the Dry is a critical case study of a fascist true believer who was supported by both Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War and later sheltered by Franco in Spain. Littell pays close attention to Degrelle's autobiographical writings, especially his account of fighting on the Eastern Front, The Russian Campaign, and uncovers an "anatomy of fascist discourse," developing on the theories of German sociologist Klaus Theweleit, whose Afterword follows the text.

The Damp and the Dry: A Brief Incursion into Fascist Territory

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

OR Books

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Books by LITTELL, JONATHAN

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The Kindly Ones

The Kindly Ones: A Novel

The Kindly Ones

Bad Voltage

The Kindly Ones

The Kindly Ones

The Kindly Ones

The Kindly Ones

The Kindly Ones

The Damp and the Dry: A Brief Incursion into Fascist Territory