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HHhH French Edition Laurent Binet Books

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HHhH French Edition Laurent Binet Books

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HHhH French Edition Laurent Binet Books Reviews

HHhH is the unusual title of a very interesting historical novel by French author Laurent Binet. The title is an acronym from the German phrase "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich," (Himmler's brain is called Heydrich), which refers to the apparently commonly held belief among Nazi officials that the intellectual acuity behind the malevolent policies of SS Chief Heinrich Himmler were instigated by his 2IC Reinhard Heydrich.

The focus of the book is on an assassination attempt on Heydrich by Czech/Slovak agents who parachute into Czech territory during the German occupation in WWII in which Heydrich is the self-proclaimed ruler of Bohemia and Moravia...territory now known as the Czech Republic. (Heydrich's official title was Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, but he his behaviour was more like that of a king...he even established his family a home in Prague Castle).

The agents, who were supported by the London-based Czechoslovak government-in-exile, were charged with removing brutal Heydrich, who had numerous nicknames including; "The Butcher of Prague" "The Hangman" and "The Blonde Beast," (Adolph Hitler referred to him as "The Man with the Iron Heart") on the consideration that his demise would be tremendously motivating for the Czech resistance movement and empowering for the suppressed Czech people.

Two operatives were chosen for the mission Jozef Gabčík a Slovak and Jan Kubis a Czech, perhaps in the hope that that success of Operation Anthropoid would galvanise the divided Czechoslovakian states in the common cause of expelling German influence from their respective homelands.

The mission was considered suicidal given the absolute power of the Third Reich during the early stages of WWII and its domination of Eastern Europe at that time. Czech capitulation was all but complete, save for a meagre resistance movement that Heydrich was determined to negate. The challenge before Gabčík and Kubis was immense and the danger to themselves and anyone associated with them real--Heydrich wasn't called the Hangman and the Butcher for nothing--he took no truck with challenges to his authority...torture and brutality were his instruments.

HHhH is an interesting novel because of the fascinating story of the assassination plot, but also because it is a book about the challenges and process of writing a historical novel. Binet makes numerous references to the license such writers have in recounting history and freely admits to using imagination to recreate events and the associated dialogue of the protagonists and other key characters.

Binet is the son of a historian and his father has evidently inspired him to meticulous historical research and intellectual enquiry as to not only what happened, but why. He meanders through numerous distracting asides in the telling of the story and includes many of his own thoughts, emotions and sentiments, which is rather unorthodox and unusual in this type of novel, but Binet makes it interesting and eventually brings it all together effectively to produce a compelling tale.

HHhH was awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman French prize for a debut novel in 2010.
HHhH, the four letters in German making the sound of a scurrilous chuckle, stands for "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich" (Himmler's brain is called Heydrich). Laurent Binet's curiosly titled book has won many prizes in France and is shortly to appear in English. A curious title for a curious book that raises some basic questions when almost everything in it is based on fact, why was it written in the first place, and in what ways can it really be called a novel? But the questions are interesting ones. What kept me riveted for 257 short chapters over 443 pages is the sheer oddity of Binet's approach, which is less a history than the story of a man researching a history, less a novel than a critique of the way historical novels are typically written. He himself calls it an "infra-novel."

Binet certainly has a compelling subject. Tall, blond, handsome, efficient, ruthless, and prodigiously talented, Reinhard Heydrich (1904-42) was virtually the poster-boy among Nazi leaders. I still remember David Warner's mesmerizing portrayal in the 1978 TV miniseries HOLOCAUST, only equaled by Kenneth Branagh's icy charm in the 2001 movie CONSPIRACY (Binet opens his book with a similar appreciation). Himmler's right-hand man, Heydrich was head of the political police and intelligence services, the organizer of Kristallnacht in 1938, the inventor of the Einsatzgruppen that murdered Jews and other undesirables during the German invasion of Poland and Russia, and the architect of the Final Solution. And a man of action; although a general in the SS, he kept his hand in as a fighter pilot by flying sorties as a captain in the Luftwaffe. In 1941, he was appointed Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, where he used the classic combination of carrot and stick -- small incentives coupled with brutal repression -- to bend the people of Czechosolvakia to the German will, earning in a matter of months the soubriquet of the "Butcher of Prague." He was shortly about to transfer his attentions to occupied France in May 1942, when he was assassinated by two expatriates, a Czech and a Slovak, trained and equipped by Britain and parachuted in five months earlier.

The book is the story of that assassination, but don't expect anything like Frederick Forsyth's THE DAY OF THE JACKAL. Binet's focus is much less on the agents, Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcík, than on their target. Unlike Forsyth, who remains omniscient and unseen while detail after detail clicks into place like a well-oiled machine, Binet keeps himself very much in the picture. He describes his own visits to the former Czechosolvakia, his explorations, even his girlfriends. He writes an episode one way, then discovers more information and writes it again. He invents dialogue, then reproaches himself for doing so. He dismisses something as unfounded gossip, but manages to use it anyway in dismissing it. He will come up with three different interpretations of a scene, only to reject them all. The short chapters, some no more than a single paragraph, involve constant shadow boxing, as the author dances around his subject, feinting here and jabbing there. Yet while the mood is mainly playful and almost disinterested, it can switch in an instant to effects of great power, as when he visits the church crypt in which the assassins were finally trapped, or in the magnificent and unexpected sweep of the 22-page chapter that follows the attack.

None of this is new. Heydrich has appeared in movies and books, both good and bad. There have been other biographies, other novels, and other accounts of the assassination. Binet refers to them all, and his criticism of their excesses is one of the more entertaining aspects of the book. HHhH is a novel only in that the author appears as a major character, and that he doesn't confine himself entirely to documented fact. But it is no more fiction than Thomas Keneally's SCHINDLER'S ARK is fiction, and a lot less dry in style. In the current genre of the documentary novel (which Keneally virtually invented), this is far more successful than, say, Steve Sem-Sandberg's recent best-seller THE EMPEROR OF LIES, which mingles historical and invented characters indiscriminately. Binet also has some cutting things to say about Jonathan Littell's THE KINDLY ONES, a French best-seller in 2006 covering much of the same ground. Add in some snide (but very factual) comments on the ignoble behavior of some of Binet's countrymen then and now, and you can see why his book might make waves in France, though it is unlikely to have a similar effect over here.

But back to base. Is Binet merely using the charismatic but monstrous figure of Reinhard Heydrich as a springboard for some fancy dives of his own, or has he found a genuinely new way to approach the Holocaust? I think the latter. Fascinating though the author's twists and somersaults may be, what emerges from this book is the sheer scale and machinelike efficiency of the Final Solution, expressed not through a series of tragic vignettes, but through a compelling portrait of the man behind it all, and the ultimately successful operation to exterminate him.
Didn't really like how the author constantly interrupted the story(if you can call it one) to tell the readers how they should feel.
It is a well-intention book, but the author succeeded in making his own attitude clear - admiration of assassins and hatred of Heydrich, but did not
succeed in making the characters come alive. Maybe French intellectuals should stick to writing books about other French intellectuals - Binet's "The Seventh Function of Language" is a much better book than this one, and if anything, I would recommend reading it instead. Unlike the heroes of this book, the only shot Binet takes - at Jonathan Littell - misses by a wide margin. He claims that Aue's character is not well-written because a Nazi could not possibly be like him. Sorry, but Aue rings much truer than any character in this book, because he is written by a better writer. It does not matter if a Nazi could be like him - it only matters than a human being can be like him. Littell succeeds in this, while Binet can only create one-dimensional fantoms
First I read it in English and then I read it in French to enjoy the self-reflectiveness of it all.
Fast delivery, good quality and good price. It was everything I was looking for, the product met all my expectations.