Author:Jonathan Littell
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, Göring, 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.
It is a great achievement to have made this horrific tale recounted by such a profoundly unsympathetic character so gripping...a great work of literary fiction, to which readers and scholars will turn for decades to come
—— Anthony Beevor , The TimesAn extraordinarily powerful novel that leads the stunned reader on a journey through some of the darkest recesses of European history...reveals something that is desperate and depressing but profoundly important, now as ever
—— ObserverEverybody's talking about it...erudite, pitiless and mesmerising
—— Financial TimesA compelling and savage tale, with a cold dispassionate eye that never flinches from the raw reality of mass-murder... a serious attempt to describe the terrors of the Nazi regime
—— IndependentThe book rises magnificently to its own occasions, building out of its fact-crammed but stately sentences a vast and phosphorescent tableaux vivants seething with Dantesque detail
—— GuardianNor is The Kindly Ones only a great work of history and reflection, but full of striking literary writing: consummate adagios of landscape painting; lovely images and observations...even touches of macabre humour...inescapably impressive
—— Carole Angier , Literary ReviewIts account of Nazi cruelty, chaos and callousness has never been surpassed in fiction... Unforgettable...magnificent
—— London Review of BooksThe force and cool detachment with which author Jonathan Littell describes the physical realities of war and mass murder are searing. He has spent years on his research and clings closely to the historical record but this fictional presentation brings the accounts horrifically alive
—— Mary Brodbin , Socialist Review[It] provides us with a remarkable, and multidimensional guide to human evil... the work itself is, above all, a tremendous argument for fiction
—— Michael Gove , The TimesIt's a compelling and provocative novel
—— Charlotte Stretch , Time OutThe Kindly Ones has been hailed as the return of the great European realistic novel.
—— Sunday HeraldI dedicated most of the summer to Jonathan Littell's much-praised, internationally bestselling blockbuster and loved almost every minute of it...a magnificent achievement
—— James Delingpole , SpectatorAn immense novel...The depth of detail is astounding and authentic
—— Doug Kemp , Historical Novels ReviewA masterpiece
—— Antony Beevor , Seven Magazine, Sunday Telegraph Books of the YearAn extremely disturbing novel
—— Toby Clements , Daily TelegraphA remarkable and controversial novel
—— Jason Burke , ObserverJonathan Littell veers between brilliance and bathos...
—— Sally Cousins , The TelegraphGrotesque, dismaying, chilling in its focus on the fine detail of barbarism, this epic of evil is also addictively readable
—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent on SundayCompelling... utterly engaging... for anyone whose interest in his subjects is great to enough to bear their unflinching portrayal The Kindly Ones is an essential novel
—— Chris Power , The TimesIt's an amazing picture of evil, wonderfully written (and very well translated from the original French by Charlotte Mandell), and left me feeling as though I had supped with the damned
—— Jane Knight , The Times
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