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Loading... The Kindly Ones (original 2006; edition 2009)by Jonathan Littell (Autor)
Work InformationThe Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell (2006)
  
Unread books (38) EU Fiction: 1950-2022 (167) » 4 more No current Talk conversations about this book.   bilekt | Mar 30, 2024 |   ) camplakejewel | Nov 14, 2023 | It seems people either loved it or hated it. Well add me to the list of those who loved it ! Yes, its dark, depressing, and in places, deranged to the point of perversion. But that's what makes it so fascinating. And I have no doubt, that in the future, this novel will be known as one of the seminal masterpieces of modern literature. ( ) kevinkevbo | Jul 14, 2023 | Dette er en lang bok. Altfor lang, spør du meg. Og setningene ... Her er det setninger som gjerne strekker seg over halvannen side; og jeg lurer på om det er med vilje for å få frem alt det kaotiske som foregår i hodet til jeg-personen; og jeg får også inntrykk av at setningene bare blir lengre og lengre jo dypere ut i boka man kommer og jo mer forskrudd hovedpersonen blir. I tillegg er det nærmest ingen inndeling i kapitler. Historien bare fortsetter og fortsetter, og det er liksom ikke noen tid til å trekke pusten. Det er utmattende, rett og slett. Dette er en bok som muligens skal forsøke å sjokkere ved å fortelle om det som skjedde i Ukraina, i Kaukasus, i Stalingrad, i Auschwitz, og i Berlin på slutten av krigen. Det er selvsagt rystende historie, men man kjenner jo til mye av dette fra før, så overraskende er det ikke. Det er bare synd den skjønnlitterære historien blir for langdryg og, etter hvert, total uinteressant. Her er en jeg-person som skal fortelle alt han har lært om språkhistorie i Kaukasus, legge detaljert ut om alle møter med alle interessante og totalt uinteressante personer han har møtt, fortelle om alle sine seksuelle fantasier om sin søster og gud vet hvem, til minste detalj; det er ikke måte på hva han føler leseren må ha innsikt i, og det tar liksom aldri slutt. Det er sjelden jeg har vært så lei på slutten av en bok som det jeg var med denne. Tusen sider er syv hundre for mye. Jeg gir to stjerner; man får mye historie her, selv om den er pakket inn i en jeg-persons noe uinteressante, masende og trettende egenhistorie. (  ) Count_Myshkin | Aug 11, 2022 |  ) iffland | Mar 19, 2022 |
 Some of these ambitions are brilliantly realized; others much less so. But all of them make Littell’s book a serious one, deserving of serious treatment. While some will denounce Littell’s cool-eyed authorial sympathy for Aue as “obscene”—and by “sympathy” I mean simply his attempt to comprehend the character—his project seems infinitely more valuable than the reflexive gesture of writing off all those millions of killers as “monsters” or “inhuman,” which allows us too easily to draw a solid line between “them” and “us.” [...] Aue is a human brother with whom we can sympathize (by which I mean, accept that he is not simply “inhuman”), or he is a sex-crazed, incestuous, homosexual, matricidal coprophage; but you can’t have your Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and eat it, too.  The novel’s gushing fans [...] seem to have mistaken perversity for daring, pretension for ambition, an odious stunt for contrarian cleverness. Willfully sensationalistic and deliberately repellent, “The Kindly Ones” [...] is an overstuffed suitcase of a book, consisting of an endless succession of scenes in which Jews are tortured, mutilated, shot, gassed or stuffed in ovens, intercut with an equally endless succession of scenes chronicling the narrator’s incestuous and sadomasochistic fantasies. The novel [...] reads like a pointless compilation of atrocities and anti-Semitic remarks, pointlessly combined with a gross collection of sexual fantasies. Notwithstanding the controversial subject matter, this is an extraordinarily powerful novel that leads the stunned reader through extremes of both realism and surrealism on an exhausting journey through some of the darkest recesses of European history. The Kindly Ones reveals something that is desperate and depressing but profoundly important, now as ever. Max Aue, the SS executioner, states the truth with typically brutal clarity: "I am a man like other men, I am a man like you."  Littell has been very faithful to real events: his research is impressive [...] Littell, a Jew, rightly believes that the prime duty of a writer as well as a historian is to understand. He has succeeded in putting himself inside the tortured mind of his character. The Kindly Ones never descends into the sort of faction that is the curse of contemporary history [...] a great work of literary fiction, to which readers and scholars will turn for decades to come. The novel is diabolically (and I use the word advisedly) clever. It is also impressive, not merely as an act of impersonation but perhaps above all for the fiendish diligence with which it is carried out. [...] This tour de force, which not everyone will welcome, outclasses all other fictions and will continue to do so for some time to come. No summary can do it justice. Belongs to Publisher SeriesGallimard, Folio (4685) AwardsNotable Lists
Fictional memoir of Dr. Max Aue, a former Nazi officer who survived the war and has reinvented himself, many years later, as a middle-class entrepreneur and family man in northern France. Max is 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 the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews in graphic, disturbingly precise detail from the dark and disturbing point of view of the executioner rather than the victim. During the period from June 1941 through April 1945, Max is posted to Poland, the Ukraine, and the Caucasus; he is present at the Battle of Stalingrad, at Auschwitz and Cracow; he visits occupied Paris and lives through the chaos of the final days of the Nazi regime in Berlin. Although Max is a totally imagined character, his world is peopled by real historical figures, such as Eichmann, Himmler, Goring, Speer, Heydrich, Hoss, and Hitler himself. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)843.92Literature French and related languages French fiction Modern Period 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.93)
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