Customer Reviews

Les Bienveillantes (French Edition)

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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
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This thick and engrossing volume aims to be an insider's look on the entrails of the machinery of death put in place by Nazi Germany in World War II in the east from 1941 through the demise of the 3rd Reich. The point of view and adventures of a former SS officer (Dr. Max Aue) seem at first sight merely technical artifacts to allow the reader the details of several aspects of the Nazi era and the author's thorough knowledge and research of specifics of the period. These range from the bureaucratic struggles and turf wars within the different power spheres within the Nazi regime, the role of police units in the east behind the front lines, Wehrmacht-SS disputes, the military operations in the Caucasus, the linguistic and migratory histories of the Caucasian peoples, the Red Army rampage in East Prussia and the bombing of the Reich, the debauchery in the closing days of the war, music and homosexuality through nazi ideology, the question of how far did society know or wish to know about the atrocities, among many other topics. The most striking aspect in the treatment of these issues is, however, the dark veil of Nazi ideology. The narrative seems to seek the proof that Nazism permeated almost every endeavor of military and social life in World War II Germany, and it succeeds doing so.

In parallel to these quasi-historical narratives flows the personal life of Dr. Aue. In these episodes the grip of the author is somewhat less convincing and blunter, implying that deep personal psychological disturbances have had to be at the root of the Nazi evil. The closing paragraph in the book provides a sharp and dramatic ending, putting treachery to the human spirit as the final driver of Nazi ideology.

Jonathan Littell's "Les Bienveillantes" takes the reader through all the circles of the 20th century Inferno of Eastern Europe during the second world war. It may be read on one level as the modernist version of Dante's masterpiece: an architecture of the darkest places in the modern soul. The anti-hero begins as an idealist; his idealism leads him step by step into becoming a monster. Alas, he has no wise Virgil to guide him through the tortured landscape in which he finds himself. Like de Sade, he challenges us to justify our ethics and principles in the face of their definitive negation. I have often wondered how normal everyday middle class Germans could have become cogs in the Nazi death machine; this book provides an explanation.

Hopefully, an English translation will be available soon. I highly recommend this book to those with a passable knowledge of French. The prose is not overly difficult for an intermediate-level student.

Book certainly deserves "Prix Goncourt"- most prestigious French literary award. Expect, when eventually translated to English, to evoke furor of prizes and indignation (we all like to see war in black and white).
It is both tempting and hart breaking project, for this reviewer, a survivor of Nazi concentration camp, to evaluate this book
Littell's prose flows with exclusive smoothness. Excellent researching on fine details - be it geography, ethnology, languages or jargon of concentration camps. Littell's historical accounts are well researched and far from fiction. In a way book resembles "War and peace", also a lengthy war story of real historical events and real historical actors with fictitious heroes
And now short summary of events and "coloring" of those events as narrated by hero.
Hero: ex high positioned SSman, concealed homosexual, living serenely incognito and while deriving his income in lace manufacturing, feels compelled to recount his war experiences. He writes for himself. He is well to do and needs, god forbid, no justifications for his past. He wants to tell that he and you, the reader, are just same human beings. After all, he concludes, "The only indispensable for human life is air, drink and excretion, and, oh yes, pursue of truth. The rest is facultatif".
And so, our hero after joining SS travels east across Russia with, at the beginning, victorious German troops. There is a lot of work to do and lot to improve. So many humans to be eliminated, so many technical problems - mowing (machine-gunning) Jews at the edge of pit turns to mess: some victims jump in, some just wounded squirming below. Good organization prevails. One orders those condemned to lay side by side, like sardines, and than machinegun them. Than top it with layer of soil, and with another human strata - ingenious. After the work it is time to relax, to have glass of cognac and listen to good music. Yes, our hero is knowledgeable music lover: SS captures young Jewish boy who plays piano as a genius. They advance him to be sort of a mascot who plays in their officers club. Boy plays Bach and Chopin and Mozart to applauses. Narrator, our SSman, befriends him, has talks and share enthusiasm and appreciation of music. He promises him to have notes of Couperin to be send from Paris. One day, boy attempts to help in repairing broken lorry. In the act, his hand is thorn. And so his fate is sealed. He is not of use. Narrator comforts him and than take him to Sturmfuhrer who will, in turn, conduct boy to execution. Before parting narrator begs Sturmfuhrer -"please be gentle with this boy". Couple of days afterward package with Couperin notes arrive.
As we advance into immenseness of Russia things are getting rough. Lousy ersatz cafe, limited food, frost bites, and those damn Russian partisans: Russian partisans (terrorists) make procedure of liberation and democratization of Russia by well wishing Germans difficult. In stead of appreciation (and flowers) there are daily attacks and sabotages. SS captures Russian partisan girl. She is beautiful and full of rage. She is led to be hanged. All witnessing officers line up by the gallows and, one by one, in line, approaches bound girl with a rope attached to her neck. One by one kiss her affectionately and gently. When all those in line passed by, stool under her feet is kicked out.
And finely battle for Stalingrad. Our hero receives bullet trough head. While in suspended mental consciousness he revives his dreams of only female, and incestuous, partner of his life - his sister. He survives, is decorated and promoted. As a convalescent returns to France visiting his mother and step father. Without ever realizing it he murders both . Back to work, this time in managing intricacies of concentration camps. He is rational, if not sympathetic, observer. He realizes needs for better food and hygiene of working prisoners as a prerequisite of efficient production. (In this section of book Author displays remarkable level of erudition and knowledge of intricacies of concentration camps). Russians are advancing. Our hero treks trough Pomeranian forest evading Russian tanks and joins his troops. Back in Berlin he witness, sort of "sinking Titanic" syndrome of partying. Cleverly and ruthlessly eliminating witnesses to his past return, under new name, to live as a successful lace manufacturer. And, for his own satisfaction, to write memoirs confined for the rest of his life to his desk drawer: The lonely and melancholic reflections on guilt and predetermination of life events.

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Written in fairly erudite French by an American author, the length, density, and style of this book, with its allusions to mythology, music, and literature, may make reading it an imposing task, a commitment really - but well worth the effort.
Maximilien Aue, the narrator and protagonist, is a monster in the same way that Vladimir Nabokov's Humbert Humbert is a monster. Like Humbert, Max is a well-educated, multi-lingual, intellectual, first person narrator who is able to evoke the empathy of the reader in spite of the horrible things he has done. The reader is mesmerized by the book while abhorring the narrator who recounts in detail his role as an SS officer in the atrocities committed by the Nazis in WWII. This chronological narrative is interspersed with "flashbacks" to scenes from the past that reveal his homosexuality and an incestuous relationship with his twin sister.
To a certain degree, this could be considered a metafictional work in that the narrator talks about his reasons for writing and frequently addresses the reader. The fact that the narrator now owns a lace-manufacturing business also suggests mythological connections between weaving, language, and creation.
The book is divided into seven parts, all bearing the names of musical compositions. Most of the chapters are very long with paragraphs that may run three or more pages. Dialogue flows into narrative without a break and what seems like straightforward description develops an oneiric quality.
As to the title of the book and possible translations into English, I, personally, think that it would be a mistake to translate it at all. Instead, present-day American readers might benefit from an introduction including the myth of the Eumenides - those mysterious, benevolent forces (Les Bienveillantes) that the narrator refers to in the last sentence of the book.

I read this book about a year ago and it still has me obsessed. I keep checking to see when the english translation will appear. Apparently a translator has been chosen (according to a website I saw). It is not easy to read - about 900 pages with few breaks - and the subject is hardly appealing. But it certainly kept me riveted for weeks. After reading several reviews of the book, not all positive, I realized that I needed and wanted to learn more. I watched Claude Lanzmann's classic film "Shoah" and read Vasily Grossman's novel "Life and Fate." The former is certainly a better account of the holocaust and the latter a better treatment of the eastern front in general and the battle of Stalingrad in particular. Both are excellent and well recommended, but I think Littell's book will also, ultimately, be regarded as a classic.

Jonathan Littell's novel, if a novel it is, provides more questions than answers, more doubts than assurances and plenty more fears and anxieties than any book I have read for many years.
I have just read the Hebrew translation of this book, whcih has not appeared in English yet. I do not share the claim, in fact I despise it, made by some prominent Israeli critics, who argued that the book should not have been translated into Hebrew and that it should not be read by Jews or Israelis. I do share, though, with many readers, the disturbing and uneasy feelings that the book brings to the surface, and I suspect that some of my feelings relate directly to being Jewish and an Israeli.

Much as I try, I cannot ignore the fact that this particular book was written by a young Jewish writer (American-French). Jonathan Littell, in an interview with an Israeli leading newspaper claims that he does not feel Jewish and that his Jewishness is by no means the source for his decision to write the book from the point of view of an SS officer in Nazi Germany.

Surely it is not a coincidence that while reading the book I could not stop thinking about the fact that it was not written by a German but by a Jewish American-French writer. In my opinion it is an essential element in the attempt to grasp the magnitude of this novel, its messages and meanings to readers in the fist decade of the 21st century, more than 60 years after the Sencond World War and the Holocaust.

The book is powerful and effective. One can hardly stop even when one is repelled, disturbed and taken aback by the detailed, uncompromising and explicit narrative. I am left with questions, and a distinct feeling that I have not figured out half of what the writer meant. More than any book in recent years I am traumatized and obssessed by it, and unlike the writer - I have no Bienveillantes to sooth me or to put an end to this nightmare. It is a stunning, repulsive, nauseating,haunting, amazing, disturbing, agonizing book,and I suspect that these are exactly the reactions the writer wanted to extract from his readers, and perhaps this is why this book is so totally absorbing and a compelling read.

Les Bienveillantes is for the brave reader. Written by the American Jonathan Littell, son of the veteran thriller writer Robert Littell, Les Bienveillantes -- the term is roughly translated as "The Kindly Ones," the terrifying cognomen for the Erinyes, the vengeful Furies who pursue the blood-guilty in Greek myth and drama -- is the memoirs of one Max Aue, who joined the Nazi SS as a young man and served in it diligently through the twelve years of Adolf Hitler's supposed Thousand Year Reich. The book is a brilliantly researched blend of history, nightmarish picaresque adventure and Gothic horror tale. Aue is, by his own account, a monster. Haunted by but unable to escape his role in the methodical slaughter of the Jews of Eastern Europe, Aue is also a successful careerist eager for advancement and a psychically crippled sexual misfit.
And it must be added that Littell has given his Aue a sense of humor.
It's disquieting to read a book about the Nazi terror written in a fluent, compelling but somehow Americanized French. The unease, I think, is intended. We are not meant to believe that the horrors of totalitarian statism and Holocaust are the exclusive property of any one nation. They are not. Les Bienveillantes has won the Prix Goncourt. Reading it, I wondered if the melodrama wasn't too heavyhanded and the portrait of Max Aue too overdrawn. But I don't think they are. The book deserved its prize.

One wonders how this novel will be rated by English readers when it comes out sometime soon. On the one hand, it tells at great length the story of the Russian campaign to the encirclement at Stalingrad, it describes the nuts and bolts of the concentration camp economy and the conflicts between production (Speer and the Army) and racial annihilation (the SS and particularly Eichmann), it narrates the final thrust against Berlin and it features cameos from everyone from Hitler to Speer, from Junger to Himmler, from Eichmann to Höss. Those parts of the book will probably be loved by the AngloAmericans, who share with everyone else an interest (an obsession) with WWII. On the other hand, it also describes, in meticulous detail, the "hero"'s repulsive sexual preferences, his multiple murders and his odious worldview (at no point does a character, or even the narrator himself, show the obvious inconsistencies at the heart of the Nazi worldview, all the arguments happen within the Nazi mindset- this is a novelty, but not a refreshing one). Worst of all, Max gets away with it and doesn't repent at all. He loves no one and seems to derive his enjoyment from continuing to live in spite of being worthy of annihilation.

The sheer magnitude of the task and the immense erudition that the author displays in this book have led some critics to hail this as a great novel. I don't think this is the case. A 900+ page novel in which the "hero" doesn't change or evolve, where he doesn't seem to learn from his actions, where he does not develop strong attachments of any sort, where he moves across vast landscapes and meets dozens of major and minor characters but where few develop to a point where they are memorable (there are a few exceptions: a linguist whose expertise in languages is used to determine the racial origins of peoples, a demolition man who suffers because he would have preferred to build rather than destroy, but they are few and far between), is in my view a flawed enterprise. It is a magnificent endeavor, but it doesn't really satisfy the reader (or this reader, at any rate). I'm sorry to say so, but the book seems to me like one of the musical executions of classical composers by SS-men to which Aue repeatedly refers: technically profficient, but soulless.

Also, as the story progresses it becomes less and less believable, even farcical. This is not to say that the book is unenjoyable. For the first five chapters I found it hard to put down, I was spellbound. The sixth chapter (Air) I thought was vile, and the last one quite unsatisfactory. In the last two chapters, one soldiered on and was glad to be done with it. Like other long novels (and Nazi Germany), this one went out with a whimper rather than a bang.

Just finished the dutch translation...The holocaust from the perspective of a SS officer. Very impressive achievement. Historical it seems to check out as well. Not for the faint of heart, though. Would give it 6 stars, eventhough the end of the books is a bit dissapointing,if the rate would allow :)

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

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

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