The Kindly Ones

"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," (Michael Korda, The Daily Beast). 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.

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.

Author: Jonathan Littell
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 02/02/2010
Pages: 992
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.70lbs
Size: 8.02h x 5.26w x 1.65d
ISBN: 9780061353468

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 02/21/2010 pg. 20

About the Author
Littell, Jonathan: -

Jonathan Littell was born in New York to American parents, and grew up in the United States and France. He lives in Barcelona, Spain.