""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 -- ...
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""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.
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Add this copy of The Kindly Ones to cart. $23.99, very good condition, Sold by Russell Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Victoria, BC, CANADA, published 2009 by McClelland & Stewart.
Add this copy of The Kindly Ones to cart. $23.99, good condition, Sold by Russell Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Victoria, BC, CANADA, published 2009 by McClelland & Stewart.
Add this copy of The Kindly Ones: a Novel to cart. $29.00, very good condition, Sold by Hourglass Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Vancouver, BC, CANADA, published 2009 by McClelland & Stewart.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good+ in Very Good+, Not Price Clipped jacket. Book Complete number line from 1 to 5; minor wear; otherwise a solid, clean copy with no marking or underlining; collectible condition.
Add this copy of The Kindly Ones to cart. $31.00, very good condition, Sold by A Good Read rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Toronto, ON, CANADA, published 2009 by McClelland & Stewart.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 0771051530. D/j has faint moisture stain and a crayon mark at bottom spine. Curving to spine. Creasing to corners of a few internal pages. A Good Read ships from Toronto and Niagara Falls, NY-customers outside of North America please allow two to three weeks for delivery. Heavy/oversize item-additional shipping charges may be required depending on speed/destination requested.; 9.10 X 6.60 X 2.30 inches; 992 pages.
This is a frightening book that allows whomever reads it see inside of a sick man's brain. It comes close to explaining why that war happened but it still leaves questions as far as why those people allowed it to happen. The author maked you feel like you are right there when people begin to die.
