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Available
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Publication
Amsterdam Meulenhoff 2010
Library's review
De indrukwekkende geschiedenis van de aanslag op topnazi Reinhard Heydrich in mei 1942. Binet schraapt zo veel mogelijk (bekende en verzonnen) feiten bijeen, maar hoedt zich tegelijkertijd op zodanig uitdrukkelijke wijze voor het schrijven van een 'historische roman' dat hij zowel het genre van de
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historische literatuur als de 'pure' geschiedschrijving naar een hoger niveau tilt. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member RickHarsch
When a book says something exceedingly stupid or makes an obvious mistake in the first few pages a reader has to be rather kind to continue or else have nothing better to pick up. In the case of HHhH the author does both in the first three pages, yet I continued for a third reason: it seemed like
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the book might be okay anyway. On page one, author Binet writes of the assassination of Heydrich in Prague that it was '...one of the greatest acts of resistance in human history, and without doubt the greatest of the Second World War.' I quickly wrote in the margin: Tell that to the Poles. I could have listed dozens of nationalities. In Slovenia, for instance, there were countless actions by partisans that were every bit as daring and every bit as dangerous. But to be kind, let's put that exceedingly stupid remark down to the author's enthusiasm for his topic. On page three Binet notes with significance that Tito was a Croat. Tito was half Croat and half Slovene, in fact. But I read on. Binet tells the story while reflecting on telling the story, a formula for a tedious read if the author hasn't the right touch. Binet does, fortunately, and he does tell the story well. It makes for a light but very informative read of a truly compelling event. Show Less
LibraryThing member labfs39
Original. Creative. Surprising. Not words that I normally use to describe WWII literature. But Laurent Binet's novel is all of these. Ostensibly about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and the subsequent reprisals taken against the perpetrators and the Czech population, the novel is also an
Reinhard Heydrich was Himmler's right hand man in the SS, thus coining the phrase "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich (HHhH)", which translates to "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich". After the annexation of the Sudetenland and breaking off of Slovakia, the Nazi's decided that they needed a strong hand in the Czech and Bohemian Protectorate in order to maintain order and, more importantly, keep the industrialized Czech factories producing at top speed for the German army. Heydrich is sent to squelch any possible disruption caused by native Czech resistance, which he does with swift and horrifying brutality. The Czech government in exile decides to send a pair of operatives (one Czech and one Slovak) to assassinate Heydrich. Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš parachute into the Protectorate and eventually succeed in fatally wounding Heydrich, provoking one of the greatest manhunts by the SS. In the meantime, a small village with a tenuous link to one of the assassins is completely destroyed in retaliation.
If the book were simply about the assassination and the fate of the two parachutists, it would be interesting, but hardly original. Although the story is not extremely well-known, it is part of the lore of WWII. But Binet does something different. He uses the character of the author (how closely this character resembles himself, the reader is let to surmise) to talk about the process of writing the novel, thus creating a work that is self-aware and reflective. In first person conversation with the reader, the character/author describes his obsession with World War II and Czechoslovakia, his visits to Prague to pay homage to sites important to the story, his research, and how this passion effects his relationships. He constantly interrupts the narrative to interject his own feelings, questions about whether he is digressing, and how a newly discovered piece of information changes his perspective. I found myself cheering when he finds a book that he has needed in his research, wondering along with him whether Heydrich's car really was black, and commiserating when he can find no further data on a particular line of inquiry. One is tempted to forget that this is historical fiction and believe it a memoir. But instead it is a very clever piece of metafiction.
Lest you think this all rather boring and dry, let me assure you that it is funny and an absolute page turner. Each chapter is only a few paragraphs long, and they fly by. His description of the seven resistance fighters trapped in the crypt of a church surrounded by over 700 SS soldiers is absolutely spellbinding. I have never read such a creative narrative of accurate history. Fabulous and highly recommended.
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exploration of what it means to be obsessed with World War II and how our obsessions and experiences influence how we write about the past and thereby change how others in turn perceive it.Reinhard Heydrich was Himmler's right hand man in the SS, thus coining the phrase "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich (HHhH)", which translates to "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich". After the annexation of the Sudetenland and breaking off of Slovakia, the Nazi's decided that they needed a strong hand in the Czech and Bohemian Protectorate in order to maintain order and, more importantly, keep the industrialized Czech factories producing at top speed for the German army. Heydrich is sent to squelch any possible disruption caused by native Czech resistance, which he does with swift and horrifying brutality. The Czech government in exile decides to send a pair of operatives (one Czech and one Slovak) to assassinate Heydrich. Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš parachute into the Protectorate and eventually succeed in fatally wounding Heydrich, provoking one of the greatest manhunts by the SS. In the meantime, a small village with a tenuous link to one of the assassins is completely destroyed in retaliation.
If the book were simply about the assassination and the fate of the two parachutists, it would be interesting, but hardly original. Although the story is not extremely well-known, it is part of the lore of WWII. But Binet does something different. He uses the character of the author (how closely this character resembles himself, the reader is let to surmise) to talk about the process of writing the novel, thus creating a work that is self-aware and reflective. In first person conversation with the reader, the character/author describes his obsession with World War II and Czechoslovakia, his visits to Prague to pay homage to sites important to the story, his research, and how this passion effects his relationships. He constantly interrupts the narrative to interject his own feelings, questions about whether he is digressing, and how a newly discovered piece of information changes his perspective. I found myself cheering when he finds a book that he has needed in his research, wondering along with him whether Heydrich's car really was black, and commiserating when he can find no further data on a particular line of inquiry. One is tempted to forget that this is historical fiction and believe it a memoir. But instead it is a very clever piece of metafiction.
Lest you think this all rather boring and dry, let me assure you that it is funny and an absolute page turner. Each chapter is only a few paragraphs long, and they fly by. His description of the seven resistance fighters trapped in the crypt of a church surrounded by over 700 SS soldiers is absolutely spellbinding. I have never read such a creative narrative of accurate history. Fabulous and highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member CBJames
Is it insulting to turn a real person into a character in a book?
The nature of historical fiction and the inherant untrustworthyness of it is foregrounded in HHhH the new novel by Laurent Binet. Mr. Binet wants to tell the story of two men, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, who carried out an
Mr. Binet's attempt to tell the story of Kubis and Gabcik is undermined by Heydrich, whose crimes slowly takes over the narrative and by Mr. Binet's own lack of faith in the genre of historical fiction. Why write a novel instead of a history? Why create a fiction instead of telling the truth?
As the story of Heydrich's rise to power enters an almost pre-destined collision with the story of his assassins, Mr. Binet's own story, that of writing the novel we are reading attempts to takes center stage. Throughout the novel, Mr. Binet discusses the problems, both moral and literary, with writing historical fiction in general and specifically with writing about Reinhard Heydrich and the attempt on his life.
It's clear that Mr. Binet admires the bravery of Kubis and Gabcik and that he is both appalled and fascinated by Heydrich. He wants to make Heydrich a monster and he wants to keep the assassins alive as long as possible. They know that they are on a suicide mission, that there can be no escape after the attempt on Heydrich's life whether it succeeds or fails, but Mr. Binet can't stand the thought of letting them die. As the novel heads towards its inevitable conclusion, he constantly stalls the plot by interjecting discussion about his second theme how to write historical fiction-- whether or not he can insert details that he knows are false or isn't sure are true or if he can invent a character or two.
This is what I think: inventing a character in order to understand historical facts is like fabricating evidence. Or rather, in the words of my brother-in-law, with whom I've discussed all this: It's like planting false proof at a crime scene where the floor is already strewn with incriminating evidence.
Mr. Binet agonizes over his inability to include all of the people who helped with the attempt on Heydrich's life due to the confines of his narrative. Were he to include everyone who deserves to be mentioned, his book would become unreadably dense.
Through these diversions and asides the author/narrator becomes a character in the book. I began to feel that I was reading the book as it was being written, that Mr. Binet and I were in the same room composing the book's narrative, discussing which scenes and details should be included as we simultaneously wrote and read the book. At one point he falls to the temptation of including a scene he has made up, but he immediately confesses that he has done so:
That scene, like the one before it, is perfectly believable and totally made up. How impudent of me to turn a man into a puppet--a man who's been dead for a long time, who cannot defend himself. To make him drink tea, when it might turn out that he liked only coffee. To make him put on two casts, when perhaps he had only one. To make him take the bus, when he could have taken the train. To decide that he left in the evening, rather than the morning. I am ashamed of myself.
None of the actions Mr. Binet mentions above mean much on their own, but they call into question the entire nature of historical fiction. If a series of small details has been invented in order to turn a historical figure into a fully fleshed out literary character, is that character still a historical figure, still Reinhard Heydrich the Nazi mastermind of the Final Solution or has he become simply another literary villian, another Inspector Javert? Of course we also have to ask at what point do the small details step over the line and become simply fiction outright. Alternatively, is Mr. Binet simply having me on. Is he making fun of people who criticize historical fiction for objecting to things that do not really matter? Is his critique of historical fiction or of historical fiction's critics?
By the closing of the novel, Mr. Binet appears desperate to keep his heros alive. Although the assassination attempt goes wrong, the two young men manage to escape and go into hiding. The manhunt that follows can only end with their eventual discovery and death, which we both, the novelist and his reader, know. But we both want to keep Kubiš and Gabčík alive as long as possible. Attempting to delay the end of the story, and thereby expand the lives of his characters, the author dates each paragraph, putting one day between each, stretching the hero's final eight hours into well over a week of time, but the dates are 2008, when the author was writing not when the heros were living. What does this mean? Did the author write just one paragraph per day because he could not bring himself to write the final one? Is he attempting to prolong their lives through narrative? Can art prolong life? If the author is committed to his preference for truth over invented detail then he cannot prolong the lives of the people in his book, but if he takes the steps needed to make them into characters instead of people can he give them any ending he likes: prolong their lives, let them escape, grant them happiness?
In HHhH, Mr. Binet managed to find a story about the Third Reich that many readers will be unfamiliar with. I knew nothing about Reinhard Heydrich nor the attempt on his life before reading this novel. This made HHhH work for me on the level of a straightforward thriller. What I did not expect to find was so much about the nature of literature and its relationship to historical reality. HHhH is a book about World War II and a book about writing books about World War II. I never would have guessed that the reading about writing a book could be just as exciting as reading about the war itself.
The nature of historical fiction and the inherant untrustworthyness of it is foregrounded in HHhH the new novel by Laurent Binet. Mr. Binet wants to tell the story of two men, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, who carried out an
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assassination attempt on the life of Reinhard Heydrich, second in command of the Nazi SS under Himmler and possibly the heir-apparent to Adolph Hitler. Mr. Binet's attempt to tell the story of Kubis and Gabcik is undermined by Heydrich, whose crimes slowly takes over the narrative and by Mr. Binet's own lack of faith in the genre of historical fiction. Why write a novel instead of a history? Why create a fiction instead of telling the truth?
As the story of Heydrich's rise to power enters an almost pre-destined collision with the story of his assassins, Mr. Binet's own story, that of writing the novel we are reading attempts to takes center stage. Throughout the novel, Mr. Binet discusses the problems, both moral and literary, with writing historical fiction in general and specifically with writing about Reinhard Heydrich and the attempt on his life.
It's clear that Mr. Binet admires the bravery of Kubis and Gabcik and that he is both appalled and fascinated by Heydrich. He wants to make Heydrich a monster and he wants to keep the assassins alive as long as possible. They know that they are on a suicide mission, that there can be no escape after the attempt on Heydrich's life whether it succeeds or fails, but Mr. Binet can't stand the thought of letting them die. As the novel heads towards its inevitable conclusion, he constantly stalls the plot by interjecting discussion about his second theme how to write historical fiction-- whether or not he can insert details that he knows are false or isn't sure are true or if he can invent a character or two.
This is what I think: inventing a character in order to understand historical facts is like fabricating evidence. Or rather, in the words of my brother-in-law, with whom I've discussed all this: It's like planting false proof at a crime scene where the floor is already strewn with incriminating evidence.
Mr. Binet agonizes over his inability to include all of the people who helped with the attempt on Heydrich's life due to the confines of his narrative. Were he to include everyone who deserves to be mentioned, his book would become unreadably dense.
Through these diversions and asides the author/narrator becomes a character in the book. I began to feel that I was reading the book as it was being written, that Mr. Binet and I were in the same room composing the book's narrative, discussing which scenes and details should be included as we simultaneously wrote and read the book. At one point he falls to the temptation of including a scene he has made up, but he immediately confesses that he has done so:
That scene, like the one before it, is perfectly believable and totally made up. How impudent of me to turn a man into a puppet--a man who's been dead for a long time, who cannot defend himself. To make him drink tea, when it might turn out that he liked only coffee. To make him put on two casts, when perhaps he had only one. To make him take the bus, when he could have taken the train. To decide that he left in the evening, rather than the morning. I am ashamed of myself.
None of the actions Mr. Binet mentions above mean much on their own, but they call into question the entire nature of historical fiction. If a series of small details has been invented in order to turn a historical figure into a fully fleshed out literary character, is that character still a historical figure, still Reinhard Heydrich the Nazi mastermind of the Final Solution or has he become simply another literary villian, another Inspector Javert? Of course we also have to ask at what point do the small details step over the line and become simply fiction outright. Alternatively, is Mr. Binet simply having me on. Is he making fun of people who criticize historical fiction for objecting to things that do not really matter? Is his critique of historical fiction or of historical fiction's critics?
By the closing of the novel, Mr. Binet appears desperate to keep his heros alive. Although the assassination attempt goes wrong, the two young men manage to escape and go into hiding. The manhunt that follows can only end with their eventual discovery and death, which we both, the novelist and his reader, know. But we both want to keep Kubiš and Gabčík alive as long as possible. Attempting to delay the end of the story, and thereby expand the lives of his characters, the author dates each paragraph, putting one day between each, stretching the hero's final eight hours into well over a week of time, but the dates are 2008, when the author was writing not when the heros were living. What does this mean? Did the author write just one paragraph per day because he could not bring himself to write the final one? Is he attempting to prolong their lives through narrative? Can art prolong life? If the author is committed to his preference for truth over invented detail then he cannot prolong the lives of the people in his book, but if he takes the steps needed to make them into characters instead of people can he give them any ending he likes: prolong their lives, let them escape, grant them happiness?
In HHhH, Mr. Binet managed to find a story about the Third Reich that many readers will be unfamiliar with. I knew nothing about Reinhard Heydrich nor the attempt on his life before reading this novel. This made HHhH work for me on the level of a straightforward thriller. What I did not expect to find was so much about the nature of literature and its relationship to historical reality. HHhH is a book about World War II and a book about writing books about World War II. I never would have guessed that the reading about writing a book could be just as exciting as reading about the war itself.
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LibraryThing member AlisonY
Whilst part of the way through reading HHhH, my husband enquired what the point of the book was. After thinking hard for a moment I struggled to give him a clear answer. Is it the story of a writer's experience of writing an historical novel? Is it an historical factual account, or a fictional
Now that I've finished the book, I would say that it's all these things and more. This book is nothing short of a total game changer, turning literary history completely on its head and creating a new genre of its own.
It's brave, it's audacious (Binet has no fear in head-on negatively critiquing his successful literary predecessors), it's thrilling, it's unique, it's page-turning, and above all its eminently readable.
HHhH is written in the story within a story format, with Binet narrating his struggles to do justice to the story of an assassination attempt on Reinhard Heidrich by a Czech and Slovak parachuted in from London. So many story lines are interwoven within the narrative - the accession of Heidrich through the ranks of the Third Reich, the lead up to the Final Solution, the political divisions within Czechoslovakia, the Czech Resistance movement, the increasing expansion of the Third Reich within Europe, and Binet's analysis of the right and wrong ways to write a book about a key historical event.
This story could have ended up like so many other non-fiction history books - either jam-packed full of endless detail that becomes tedious and impossible to remember, or else with facts sacrificed where it suits to create a more thrilling fictional account. Binet eyeballs both alternatives and decides to create a third option instead; he increases the tension with fictionalised firsthand detail on occasion, but then immediately admits to the reader where he's 'padded', and he also bins most of the factual detail that's irrelevant to his ultimate storyline, however tempting it may be to cram in all those facts he's meticulously researched.
It all sounds a bit barmy - and it is - but it's a format that totally works. He includes just the right amount of detail and literary brilliance to put you right there as a fly on the wall of every scene. I was gripped from the first page to the last, and every part of my brain feels like it's had a workout. I'm now informed about part of WWII that I didn't know much about previously, I'm emotionally exhausted from feeling like I was standing on the sidelines of a James Bond-esque mission of heroic daring, and I can't stop thinking about how it's still possible for someone to take such a hugely new approach to writing.
The whole time I was reading this amazing book I kept thinking "THIS is how we should be teaching history to our children". I am consistently frustrated by my inability to remember historical facts, yet Binet's writing style is so enveloping I feel confident there are many facts from this corner of history that are now indelibly imprinted in my mind. Binet is the cool, funky, history teacher you never had - but you have now.
5 stars (which astounds me - I don't even really like historical or thriller genres)
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account of a historical event? Is it an alternative account of the Third Reich during WWII, told from the specific viewpoint of the Czechs? Is it a biography of the rise and fall of Heydrich, the Blonde Beast, Hangman of Europe, Butcher of Prague? Is it a critique of the traditional techniques employed in writing historical texts? Is it simply a thrilling spy novel? Now that I've finished the book, I would say that it's all these things and more. This book is nothing short of a total game changer, turning literary history completely on its head and creating a new genre of its own.
It's brave, it's audacious (Binet has no fear in head-on negatively critiquing his successful literary predecessors), it's thrilling, it's unique, it's page-turning, and above all its eminently readable.
HHhH is written in the story within a story format, with Binet narrating his struggles to do justice to the story of an assassination attempt on Reinhard Heidrich by a Czech and Slovak parachuted in from London. So many story lines are interwoven within the narrative - the accession of Heidrich through the ranks of the Third Reich, the lead up to the Final Solution, the political divisions within Czechoslovakia, the Czech Resistance movement, the increasing expansion of the Third Reich within Europe, and Binet's analysis of the right and wrong ways to write a book about a key historical event.
This story could have ended up like so many other non-fiction history books - either jam-packed full of endless detail that becomes tedious and impossible to remember, or else with facts sacrificed where it suits to create a more thrilling fictional account. Binet eyeballs both alternatives and decides to create a third option instead; he increases the tension with fictionalised firsthand detail on occasion, but then immediately admits to the reader where he's 'padded', and he also bins most of the factual detail that's irrelevant to his ultimate storyline, however tempting it may be to cram in all those facts he's meticulously researched.
It all sounds a bit barmy - and it is - but it's a format that totally works. He includes just the right amount of detail and literary brilliance to put you right there as a fly on the wall of every scene. I was gripped from the first page to the last, and every part of my brain feels like it's had a workout. I'm now informed about part of WWII that I didn't know much about previously, I'm emotionally exhausted from feeling like I was standing on the sidelines of a James Bond-esque mission of heroic daring, and I can't stop thinking about how it's still possible for someone to take such a hugely new approach to writing.
The whole time I was reading this amazing book I kept thinking "THIS is how we should be teaching history to our children". I am consistently frustrated by my inability to remember historical facts, yet Binet's writing style is so enveloping I feel confident there are many facts from this corner of history that are now indelibly imprinted in my mind. Binet is the cool, funky, history teacher you never had - but you have now.
5 stars (which astounds me - I don't even really like historical or thriller genres)
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LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
To get away with constant metafictional intrusions and backtracks and historigraphical excursions and surprisethatdidntreallyhappens and thatdetailringsfalselemmejustgetthatforyas like Binet does, you have to be not only smart (of course), but either really really funny or really really sincere.
Anyway, there is an obsessive but not so much that it's aesthetically displeasing, let us say "painterly," level of detail about the target and the leadup and most of it seems actually actual, and really if this is the kind of book you're reading to learn about Heydrich you don't care if you get a few salient details wrong, or I guess I mean if a few of the wrong details strike you as salient. You know? I'm not gonna read Group Captain Archibald Baldarchison's The Guns They Carried. I thought interesting thoughts about how weird-quixotic it is that we try to "get inside" history, but what a piece of shit history would be if we couldn't, and the moments leading up to the assassination and the aftermath (Lidice is slighted, in a way, but it's a story that almost asks to be slighted. Everyone died. No, no reason. To spend too long learning about all their lives and loves so you can feel maudlin and not just sick about it almost lets their SS murderers off the hook). The time-stands-still stuff, the how-did-i-get-here-this-is-not-my-beautiful-wife only it really isn't it's actually you just tried to kill Heydrich and your piece of shit Sten gun jammed and now you're looking at him and he's looking at you and a bird is shitting on his towncar and the kid on the other side of the tram just let go of his balloon and this is your life--that stuff was deeply skilled, a flight of literary artistry that Binet spent the whole book working himself up for. He's not a genius but I bet if you met him you'd think wow this guy is good at everything and he's totally going home with the really pretty tall girl, isn't he.
Gabčik and Kubiš have a bit of that to them too, maybe why Binet likes them. They shook the thrones of the mighty. Their last stand was brave. Doing a little 200-page writeup to remind people of that and also what slavering monsters actually took over a whole huge European country seems like a reasonable thing to do.
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And since this is a book about Nazis, that pretty much leaves only the latter. Binet manages both--tells the parallel stories of Gabčik and Kubiš and of Heydrich, aka the Blond Beast, aka to his little fucking German classmates "Süss the Jew" because there's no loathing like self-loathing (he was not, in fact, Jewish, but well, clearly Heydrich is gonna have a head full of burn-the-world-down about it, you know?) with appropriate hero worship (but thoughtful) and appalled (but still thoughtful) execration, respectively--the healthy horror of the healthy mind in a healthy body who hits the gym and has a couple glasses of wine a night and has regrets about his lost Slovak love but not like cut-your-wrists regrets. you know? Binet is very clever and very well adjusted and just seems like a nice guy, and that's the only reason we tolerate all the dicking around he does of us. I mean, I do; I see others quibble. I like nice guys.Anyway, there is an obsessive but not so much that it's aesthetically displeasing, let us say "painterly," level of detail about the target and the leadup and most of it seems actually actual, and really if this is the kind of book you're reading to learn about Heydrich you don't care if you get a few salient details wrong, or I guess I mean if a few of the wrong details strike you as salient. You know? I'm not gonna read Group Captain Archibald Baldarchison's The Guns They Carried. I thought interesting thoughts about how weird-quixotic it is that we try to "get inside" history, but what a piece of shit history would be if we couldn't, and the moments leading up to the assassination and the aftermath (Lidice is slighted, in a way, but it's a story that almost asks to be slighted. Everyone died. No, no reason. To spend too long learning about all their lives and loves so you can feel maudlin and not just sick about it almost lets their SS murderers off the hook). The time-stands-still stuff, the how-did-i-get-here-this-is-not-my-beautiful-wife only it really isn't it's actually you just tried to kill Heydrich and your piece of shit Sten gun jammed and now you're looking at him and he's looking at you and a bird is shitting on his towncar and the kid on the other side of the tram just let go of his balloon and this is your life--that stuff was deeply skilled, a flight of literary artistry that Binet spent the whole book working himself up for. He's not a genius but I bet if you met him you'd think wow this guy is good at everything and he's totally going home with the really pretty tall girl, isn't he.
Gabčik and Kubiš have a bit of that to them too, maybe why Binet likes them. They shook the thrones of the mighty. Their last stand was brave. Doing a little 200-page writeup to remind people of that and also what slavering monsters actually took over a whole huge European country seems like a reasonable thing to do.
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LibraryThing member amydross
I sought this out because I'd heard it was supposed to be a historical novel that critiques the idea of historical novels, which sounded fascinating to me. But in actuality, it's not really a novel at all, by even my extremely broad definition of the term. And it's not a serious history book,
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certainly, since there's no bibliography. And it fails perhaps worst of all as any kind of critique, despite the metafictional flourishes. If it succeeds at all, it's as pop-history, written in the same tone as those silly, lurid, crowd-pleasing Hitler documentaries on the History channel. Show Less
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
This is historical fiction about the assassination of Heinrich Heydrich (the main proponent for the Final Solution at the Wansee Conference). While it is a novel about Heydrich, his assassination, and his assassins, it is also a novel about writing a novel, specifically writing historical fiction.
I can objectively see that this is a very clever book, and perhaps a good novel in the metafictional sense. Binet calls the book an "infra-novel" in which the creative artist's struggle comes to the foreground. However, to give you a sense of how it grated on me, I can do no better than quote the following excerpt from an Amazon review:
"Imagine, if you will, picking up Tolstoy's War and Peace, and being confronted with passages like, 'And so Napoleon decided to invade Russia. Or at least that's what I think he decided. I wasn't there, so I can't exactly read his mind. All I can do is tell you that he did invade Russia, which is the story I'm going to write about. But it's hard to concentrate on that story just now because I'm equally fascinated with the lovely, blonde, 20 year old stenographer I just hired, and she's a tremendous distraction."
2 stars
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And that is the part I did not like. The constant authorial intrusions and interruptions bothered me terribly. (Or rather, perhaps, the intrusions of a fictional narrator who is writing a novel of historical fiction--in either case my complaint is the same). This may be merely a personal preference of mine, as I've had this same reaction to at least one other book like this. (However, in August I read The Lost City of Z, in which the author inserts into the history of the Amazonian explorations of Percy Fawcett his own adventures in researching the story and ultimately following in Fawcett's footsteps, and I found that in The Lost City of Z, the authorial intrusions worked perfectly--the book would not have been as good without them.)I can objectively see that this is a very clever book, and perhaps a good novel in the metafictional sense. Binet calls the book an "infra-novel" in which the creative artist's struggle comes to the foreground. However, to give you a sense of how it grated on me, I can do no better than quote the following excerpt from an Amazon review:
"Imagine, if you will, picking up Tolstoy's War and Peace, and being confronted with passages like, 'And so Napoleon decided to invade Russia. Or at least that's what I think he decided. I wasn't there, so I can't exactly read his mind. All I can do is tell you that he did invade Russia, which is the story I'm going to write about. But it's hard to concentrate on that story just now because I'm equally fascinated with the lovely, blonde, 20 year old stenographer I just hired, and she's a tremendous distraction."
2 stars
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LibraryThing member adpaton
If you’ve ever pondered the seeming oxymoron ‘the non-fiction novel’, HHhH will illustrate the concept more clearly than any description ever could. It’s post modern but don’t let that put you off because despite the subject of the book po-mo is transformed into something light and
The titular HHhH is Reinhard Heydrich, Butcher of Prague and 2iC to Himmler, although he was regarded as the more dangerous of the two: Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich [Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich] the Nazi tag went, and Binet is unsparing in his descriptions of the so-called Blonde Beast’s cruelty.
On the one hand, this is a meticulously researched account of Heydrich’s life, and of Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, the two parachutists who assassinated him. Sent from England by the Czech government in exile, the two resistance fighters ambushed Himmler’s open-topped Mercedes when it slowed to navigate a bend in the streets of Prague.
The gun jammed but they tossed a grenade: Heydrich died of septicemia a week later while the two assassins were hidden in a church and, when discovered, fought to the death. In reprisal, the Nazi’s burned the village of Lidice to the ground and those inhabitants who were not shot, were sent to the death camps.
Fascinating as the narrative is, what makes the book compelling is the authorial voice as the reader is privy to the unnamed narrator’s anguished inner debate and internal arguments over the question of invented dialogue or an imagined portrayal of what real-life characters were thinking or feeling.
With a religious respect for reality, the narrator rejects imagined scenes absolutely, deciding invention has no place in historical fiction, not even the insertion of an invented character into the action. But while the history is faction, the authorial comment is enticingly entertaining and, one suspects, leavened with a hearty scoop of pure fiction. HHhH is an utter delight.
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playful in this excellent debut novel. The titular HHhH is Reinhard Heydrich, Butcher of Prague and 2iC to Himmler, although he was regarded as the more dangerous of the two: Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich [Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich] the Nazi tag went, and Binet is unsparing in his descriptions of the so-called Blonde Beast’s cruelty.
On the one hand, this is a meticulously researched account of Heydrich’s life, and of Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, the two parachutists who assassinated him. Sent from England by the Czech government in exile, the two resistance fighters ambushed Himmler’s open-topped Mercedes when it slowed to navigate a bend in the streets of Prague.
The gun jammed but they tossed a grenade: Heydrich died of septicemia a week later while the two assassins were hidden in a church and, when discovered, fought to the death. In reprisal, the Nazi’s burned the village of Lidice to the ground and those inhabitants who were not shot, were sent to the death camps.
Fascinating as the narrative is, what makes the book compelling is the authorial voice as the reader is privy to the unnamed narrator’s anguished inner debate and internal arguments over the question of invented dialogue or an imagined portrayal of what real-life characters were thinking or feeling.
With a religious respect for reality, the narrator rejects imagined scenes absolutely, deciding invention has no place in historical fiction, not even the insertion of an invented character into the action. But while the history is faction, the authorial comment is enticingly entertaining and, one suspects, leavened with a hearty scoop of pure fiction. HHhH is an utter delight.
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LibraryThing member Gwendydd
If this were just a historical fiction novel, it wouldn't be a very good one - most of the characters are only a little developed, so they remain murky and faceless. The storyline is full of stops and starts and tangents. The pacing is determined not so much by the chain of events as by the
However, what makes this lackluster historical fiction novel a delightful read is the constant intrusion of the author. He doesn't develop his characters because he wants to remain true to history - he doesn't want to dishonor their memories by making up false details or false dialog. The author is plagued by his desire to only tell the truth, and to tell every bit of relevant truth he can discover. He will write whole scenes hypothetically, or write a scene and then invalidate it in the next chapter by saying it didn't really happen and he can't really tell the story that way. When the climactic scene finally arrives, what he writes about isn't so much the events of the scene itself, but his own excitement and trepidation as he imagines the scene.
The major weakness to this approach is that he never discusses the nature of truth, at least not overtly. He hates to put in any fact that he can't verify from sources, yet he never questions his sources, nor does he explore the fundamental question of how we know what we know, and the relationship of verifiable facts to the greater human truth revealed by these events. He also never discusses why, if he is so concerned about only relating true facts, he is writing a novel instead of a work of history.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, and thinking about the historical fiction author's responsibilities to his material.
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author's sense of when things should happen. Important scenes and details are left out, trivial details are agonized over at length.However, what makes this lackluster historical fiction novel a delightful read is the constant intrusion of the author. He doesn't develop his characters because he wants to remain true to history - he doesn't want to dishonor their memories by making up false details or false dialog. The author is plagued by his desire to only tell the truth, and to tell every bit of relevant truth he can discover. He will write whole scenes hypothetically, or write a scene and then invalidate it in the next chapter by saying it didn't really happen and he can't really tell the story that way. When the climactic scene finally arrives, what he writes about isn't so much the events of the scene itself, but his own excitement and trepidation as he imagines the scene.
The major weakness to this approach is that he never discusses the nature of truth, at least not overtly. He hates to put in any fact that he can't verify from sources, yet he never questions his sources, nor does he explore the fundamental question of how we know what we know, and the relationship of verifiable facts to the greater human truth revealed by these events. He also never discusses why, if he is so concerned about only relating true facts, he is writing a novel instead of a work of history.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, and thinking about the historical fiction author's responsibilities to his material.
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LibraryThing member lriley
This might be a very good work if it weren't for Binet's constant intrusion of himself into his own novel. It gets to the point where he even subjects his readers to his own literary opinions--for instance attacking Jonathan Littel's The kindly ones and even taking a swipe at Michel Houellebecq.
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Basically his novel could have been edited down another 50 pages and been a lot better for it. Personally I like a lot about it but the author who is a literature professor is pretty much treating his readers like they were just another one of his classes. It struck me as a bit assholish. Not sure I'm going to give him another chance. Show Less
LibraryThing member anthroabby
Awkward title aside, this was fairly brilliant. Binet is a French author, and in his own words HHhH is an infranovel. It is a dual narrative, with the author as narrator in the present, as well as, simultaneously, an account of Operation Anthropoid, the attempt to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich –
To be fair, the historical narrative is also more than the story of Heydrich's death. It is the story of his life and the lives of those who killed him. It is the context of all these lives: central European history, the Great War, the rise of National Socialism, anti-semitism, the betrayal of the Munich Agreement, Prague. At times, Binet's scope is incredibly broad, but perhaps because of the author's narrative, HHhH feels very intimate. The author's narrative serves to remind the reader why, for example, we are reading about medieval German settlement in Bohemia or other such interesting but seemingly unrelated stories. Beyond these reminders, the author allows the reader to see into his mind, his obsession with Operation Anthropoid, to experience his doubts, his concerns about what to include and not to include, and, in a more limited sense, the effects of writing and obsession on loved ones. While the author’s narrative is not the traditional account of his own life so common to dual narratives, it is certainly the account of the life this novel.
HHhH is thought provoking on many levels: the philosophical issues of crafting the novel, of story telling, of truth, of what motivates men to brutality and hate and bravery and betrayal. The struggle in HHhH is not really about whether the two Czechoslovak heroes will successfully assassinate Heydrich; that story is, if not well-known today, easily checked. HHhH is also the struggle of the author to not lose himself in the often self-centered questions of his own life, at the expense of those whose lives he is recounting. Just like our heroes, the author is successful. We still hear the historical narrative, loud and clear, in all its harshness and brutality. For Heydrich was a brutal man; his reign as "protector" of Bohemia and Moravia was marked by extreme cruelty and violence, as were the reactions of the Nazi regime on the Czech people after his assassination. This makes HHhH, at times, difficult to read. But Binet also recounts stunning, shining, astonishing examples of bravery – the sort that make you wonder, what if it were me? – that counteract the darkness of Nazism.
The heroes of Operation Anthropoid paid for their success with their lives; the reader is left wondering what his authorial success cost our narrator.
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Himmler’s right hand man, architect of the Final Solution, and brutal Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia known as “The Butcher of Prague.” The narrative taking place in the present is that of the author, of his struggles with his story, with only a few interesting droplets about his life. The author's narrative makes this novel into something more than "just" a novel about Heydrich's assassination. It becomes a postmodern treatise on the novel -- even while, somehow, critiquing the nihilism of postmodernism -- and a discussion on truth. To be fair, the historical narrative is also more than the story of Heydrich's death. It is the story of his life and the lives of those who killed him. It is the context of all these lives: central European history, the Great War, the rise of National Socialism, anti-semitism, the betrayal of the Munich Agreement, Prague. At times, Binet's scope is incredibly broad, but perhaps because of the author's narrative, HHhH feels very intimate. The author's narrative serves to remind the reader why, for example, we are reading about medieval German settlement in Bohemia or other such interesting but seemingly unrelated stories. Beyond these reminders, the author allows the reader to see into his mind, his obsession with Operation Anthropoid, to experience his doubts, his concerns about what to include and not to include, and, in a more limited sense, the effects of writing and obsession on loved ones. While the author’s narrative is not the traditional account of his own life so common to dual narratives, it is certainly the account of the life this novel.
HHhH is thought provoking on many levels: the philosophical issues of crafting the novel, of story telling, of truth, of what motivates men to brutality and hate and bravery and betrayal. The struggle in HHhH is not really about whether the two Czechoslovak heroes will successfully assassinate Heydrich; that story is, if not well-known today, easily checked. HHhH is also the struggle of the author to not lose himself in the often self-centered questions of his own life, at the expense of those whose lives he is recounting. Just like our heroes, the author is successful. We still hear the historical narrative, loud and clear, in all its harshness and brutality. For Heydrich was a brutal man; his reign as "protector" of Bohemia and Moravia was marked by extreme cruelty and violence, as were the reactions of the Nazi regime on the Czech people after his assassination. This makes HHhH, at times, difficult to read. But Binet also recounts stunning, shining, astonishing examples of bravery – the sort that make you wonder, what if it were me? – that counteract the darkness of Nazism.
The heroes of Operation Anthropoid paid for their success with their lives; the reader is left wondering what his authorial success cost our narrator.
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LibraryThing member publiusdb
HHhH may be one of the most intriguing novels I have read in recent memory. Translated from French, its title is based on a German sentence: “Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich”, or “Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich”. It is the story of the 1942 attack in Prague on Reinhard Heydrich, one of
But Binet's novel, cleverly if awkwardly named, is something more, and something different. Perhaps the best way to describe it is to say that the novel is as much about Binet's obsession with the attack, the Czech and Slovak heroes Jozef Gabćik and Jan Kubiš who carried it out, and its central villain, Heydrich himself. I have heard the writing of a novel described as requiring a certain level of insanity and obsession, and Binet demonstrates a level of intense scrutiny that could match this description.
Almost pageant like, his unconventional style puts him in the middle of the book, a narrator that at times reminded me of the Chorus in the Prologue of Shakespeare's Henry V, eager to be both in the scene and to describe it. Indeed, we move with him as he tells the story, quibbling over what details to include, what to exclude, how to tell the scene, and what were the characters really thinking. For, after all, the characters lived, were real, and the events described happened.
Strange and unconventional, but oddly gripping and thrilling, even as it ends tragic and triumphant. For the end of the story is not a secret--you can find the facts of the tale on Wikipedia. But the imagination with which Binet approaches his subject, the path his obsession takes, is worth hearing it told in his voice. "O for a Muse of fire[...]"
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the most dangerous men in the Hitler's inner circle, if not in all of Nazi Germany, and one of the main architects of the "Final Solution," the Holocaust. Known variously as "the Butcher of Prague" by those who feared him and "the man with the iron heart" by Hitler, Heydrich was a dangerous, evil man. But Binet's novel, cleverly if awkwardly named, is something more, and something different. Perhaps the best way to describe it is to say that the novel is as much about Binet's obsession with the attack, the Czech and Slovak heroes Jozef Gabćik and Jan Kubiš who carried it out, and its central villain, Heydrich himself. I have heard the writing of a novel described as requiring a certain level of insanity and obsession, and Binet demonstrates a level of intense scrutiny that could match this description.
Almost pageant like, his unconventional style puts him in the middle of the book, a narrator that at times reminded me of the Chorus in the Prologue of Shakespeare's Henry V, eager to be both in the scene and to describe it. Indeed, we move with him as he tells the story, quibbling over what details to include, what to exclude, how to tell the scene, and what were the characters really thinking. For, after all, the characters lived, were real, and the events described happened.
Strange and unconventional, but oddly gripping and thrilling, even as it ends tragic and triumphant. For the end of the story is not a secret--you can find the facts of the tale on Wikipedia. But the imagination with which Binet approaches his subject, the path his obsession takes, is worth hearing it told in his voice. "O for a Muse of fire[...]"
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LibraryThing member nosajeel
A spellbinding retelling of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by a Czech and a Slovak acting parachuted into occupied Czechoslovakia by British intelligence. It provides a mini-biography of Heydrich, his rise to power, and his brutality--not just as one of the architects of the Final Solution
The conclusion following Heydrich's assassination is even more heartbreaking than the rest of the book, depicting both the brutal and borderline random German reprisals and the tragic deaths of KubiÂÃ and GabÂÂÃ_k.
Judging from the few reviews I quickly skimmed, I'm in the minority in liking the authors method which is to tell the story in short chapters (about 270 in all) with frequent postmodern intrusions of the authorial voice talking about how he is writing the book, the books he read to research it, where he is not sure of the facts (in some cases going back and correcting earlier chapters), how he is incapable of rendering the full tribute that the Czechoslovak partisans deserve, etc. I found the story was so powerful that these frequent authorial intrusions did not diminish it in any way. And in fact they enhanced it by making you more confident in the credibility of the story, which itself allows you to be more immersed in it, because the author is so clear about the limits of his telling that you are that much more confident in what is there. (Plus I got a few more recommendations of books I had never heard of but now am interested in reading.)
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but also as the overlord of occupied Czechoslovakia (or technically occupied Bohemia and Moravia as Slovakia was a German puppet state). It also tells somewhat more briefly, likely reflecting the dearth of information, the story of how the assassins, Jan Kubi�à and Jozef GabÂÂÃ_k, escaped the Nazis, ended up in England, were trained for the mission and parachuted back in.The conclusion following Heydrich's assassination is even more heartbreaking than the rest of the book, depicting both the brutal and borderline random German reprisals and the tragic deaths of KubiÂà and GabÂÂÃ_k.
Judging from the few reviews I quickly skimmed, I'm in the minority in liking the authors method which is to tell the story in short chapters (about 270 in all) with frequent postmodern intrusions of the authorial voice talking about how he is writing the book, the books he read to research it, where he is not sure of the facts (in some cases going back and correcting earlier chapters), how he is incapable of rendering the full tribute that the Czechoslovak partisans deserve, etc. I found the story was so powerful that these frequent authorial intrusions did not diminish it in any way. And in fact they enhanced it by making you more confident in the credibility of the story, which itself allows you to be more immersed in it, because the author is so clear about the limits of his telling that you are that much more confident in what is there. (Plus I got a few more recommendations of books I had never heard of but now am interested in reading.)
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LibraryThing member berthirsch
HHhH by Laurent Binet
Laurent Binet at an early age was told the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and, from that day on, developed an obsession resulting in his writing HHhH.
Considered a novel it is more a hybrid; the story of how Heydrich was killed, coupled with a description of how
HHhH is an abbreviation of Himmler’s Hirn heist Heydrich which translates to Himmler’s Brain is called Heydrich. Reinhard Heydrich was an ambitious young man whose desires, and womanizing led him to be mustered out of the German Navy. Without a clear direction he wrangled an interview with Hitler’s right hand, Himmler, and acing the interview he quickly climbed the ranks of the infamous SS. He hired Eichmann, developed the plans called The Final Solution which Goering endorsed and signed on 7/31/41.
Once the war begins Heydrich is installed as the “protecktor” of Czechoslovakia. It is there that the story that Binet tells intersperses with the resistance that the former President of the Czech’s, Benes, directs from the confines of London. Indeed, the Czech and Slovak people become a major force in Britain’s struggles against the Nazis. A good proportion of the RAF are manned with pilots from Benes’s command. In London, a group of parachutists are trained to be dropped in Czechoslovakia to sabotage the Nazi advances. There Józef Gabcik and Jan Kubis are picked to carry out the killing of Heydrich.
Heydrich proves himself to be ruthless, merciless and is dubbed The Blond Beast. Still in his mid-30s he has ambition to become next in command to the Fuhrer and, one day, even supplant Hitler as leader of the German Republic.
“Hitler respects Heydrich because he combines fierceness with efficiency. If you add to this his loyalty toward the Fuhrer, you get the three elements that make the perfect Nazi…Hitler knows that H is a rising star ready to do anything to further his own ambitions.”.
Heydrich draws high marks from his higher ups for his treatment of Jews and traitors. In Chapter 111 , a brief two page entry, Binet writes a chilling description of the execution of 33,771 Jews from Kiev in the trenches of Babi Yar (September 29-30, 1941). Reading this passage sent a chill through me.
Much of the book relates how Gabcik and Kubis interact with the extensive network of partisans and resistors in Prague and the Czech countryside. These are people that need to be heroized for their efforts in resisting and combatting the Nazi horrors.
That this historical story is “novelized” allows Laurent to have license to describe events in a way that “might have occurred”. Given his years of research though, he leans heavily on documents and firsthand accounts to keep the story alive. He pulls in obscure facts and stories to paint a fuller picture of life under Nazi rule. In Chapter 112 he depicts how the Dynamo FC of Kiev defeats the German Luftwaffe team to the delight of the Ukrainian crowd and the team from Kiev is then executed for the humiliation.
Binet has created a unique technique of storytelling. He freely reflects on the years long process and research he endured to write HHhH. He sites other books written about the events described and very often judges his own efforts less than successful. Despite his own judgment he has created a worthwhile tale that keeps the reader engaged and involved. The book was awarded the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman in 2009.
Laurent Binet at an early age was told the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and, from that day on, developed an obsession resulting in his writing HHhH.
Considered a novel it is more a hybrid; the story of how Heydrich was killed, coupled with a description of how
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Binet’s years of research culminated in the publication of HHhH.HHhH is an abbreviation of Himmler’s Hirn heist Heydrich which translates to Himmler’s Brain is called Heydrich. Reinhard Heydrich was an ambitious young man whose desires, and womanizing led him to be mustered out of the German Navy. Without a clear direction he wrangled an interview with Hitler’s right hand, Himmler, and acing the interview he quickly climbed the ranks of the infamous SS. He hired Eichmann, developed the plans called The Final Solution which Goering endorsed and signed on 7/31/41.
Once the war begins Heydrich is installed as the “protecktor” of Czechoslovakia. It is there that the story that Binet tells intersperses with the resistance that the former President of the Czech’s, Benes, directs from the confines of London. Indeed, the Czech and Slovak people become a major force in Britain’s struggles against the Nazis. A good proportion of the RAF are manned with pilots from Benes’s command. In London, a group of parachutists are trained to be dropped in Czechoslovakia to sabotage the Nazi advances. There Józef Gabcik and Jan Kubis are picked to carry out the killing of Heydrich.
Heydrich proves himself to be ruthless, merciless and is dubbed The Blond Beast. Still in his mid-30s he has ambition to become next in command to the Fuhrer and, one day, even supplant Hitler as leader of the German Republic.
“Hitler respects Heydrich because he combines fierceness with efficiency. If you add to this his loyalty toward the Fuhrer, you get the three elements that make the perfect Nazi…Hitler knows that H is a rising star ready to do anything to further his own ambitions.”.
Heydrich draws high marks from his higher ups for his treatment of Jews and traitors. In Chapter 111 , a brief two page entry, Binet writes a chilling description of the execution of 33,771 Jews from Kiev in the trenches of Babi Yar (September 29-30, 1941). Reading this passage sent a chill through me.
Much of the book relates how Gabcik and Kubis interact with the extensive network of partisans and resistors in Prague and the Czech countryside. These are people that need to be heroized for their efforts in resisting and combatting the Nazi horrors.
That this historical story is “novelized” allows Laurent to have license to describe events in a way that “might have occurred”. Given his years of research though, he leans heavily on documents and firsthand accounts to keep the story alive. He pulls in obscure facts and stories to paint a fuller picture of life under Nazi rule. In Chapter 112 he depicts how the Dynamo FC of Kiev defeats the German Luftwaffe team to the delight of the Ukrainian crowd and the team from Kiev is then executed for the humiliation.
Binet has created a unique technique of storytelling. He freely reflects on the years long process and research he endured to write HHhH. He sites other books written about the events described and very often judges his own efforts less than successful. Despite his own judgment he has created a worthwhile tale that keeps the reader engaged and involved. The book was awarded the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman in 2009.
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LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
What is HHhH? Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich, or Himmler's brain is called Heydrich.
This acronym, as chilling as it was, was not the author's first choice - he would have preferred Operation Arthropoid, the name of the covert action which occupies the majority of the book. But it was rejected as
Of course history is not always so neat and clean as it is in thrillers. There are still missing pieces. The author, in one of his intermissions, describes the process as "banging his head against the wall of history". But Heydrich still looms as a 'perfect Nazi', ruthlessly efficient, mastermind of the Polish invasions, founder of the Sicherheitsdeinst, one of the most successful and unknown of the totalitarian intelligence agencies.
We see the betrayal and occupation of the Czech lands, the foolishness of Munich. Benes, fleeing to London, hatches one last plan of resistance. There is historical and political background-setting, but this builds up to a climactic set of 100 or so pages which lead from assassination to vengeance. GabāEík and Kubiš, our protagonists, are faithfully recreated from British personality dossiers, from training with Stens to the last stand in the Church of St. Cyril and Methodius.
This is in the newer class of historical fiction, and a book which seized me. Recommended.
This acronym, as chilling as it was, was not the author's first choice - he would have preferred Operation Arthropoid, the name of the covert action which occupies the majority of the book. But it was rejected as
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sounding like a Robert Ludlum, when this is a more meditative and sardonic bit of historical fiction.Of course history is not always so neat and clean as it is in thrillers. There are still missing pieces. The author, in one of his intermissions, describes the process as "banging his head against the wall of history". But Heydrich still looms as a 'perfect Nazi', ruthlessly efficient, mastermind of the Polish invasions, founder of the Sicherheitsdeinst, one of the most successful and unknown of the totalitarian intelligence agencies.
We see the betrayal and occupation of the Czech lands, the foolishness of Munich. Benes, fleeing to London, hatches one last plan of resistance. There is historical and political background-setting, but this builds up to a climactic set of 100 or so pages which lead from assassination to vengeance. GabāEík and Kubiš, our protagonists, are faithfully recreated from British personality dossiers, from training with Stens to the last stand in the Church of St. Cyril and Methodius.
This is in the newer class of historical fiction, and a book which seized me. Recommended.
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LibraryThing member colligan
I think the author needs a tad more humility and maturity and the book needs serious editing.
LibraryThing member librarianbryan
Euro-version of William Vollmann. This book would have been great if it hadn't lost so much steam at the end. The metafictional conceit of Binet not knowing how and/or wanting to write the end didn't help much. Also, if the part about the title is true, he should have fought his editor and kept the
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original. The snob factor on John Lee's accent was luscious. Show Less
LibraryThing member k6gst
Stunning, moving, thrilling, and intelligent.
LibraryThing member dbsovereign
One of those books that people either like or dislike depending on whether or not they appreciate the style. I liked it! After all, how can a historian separate himself from the history he tries to write? A historical novel about the assassination attempt on the life of Reinhard Heydrich, the
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people involved, the WW2 milieu and the aftermath. Show Less
LibraryThing member kvrfan
The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich is one of the great heroic tales of our time. Two Czech freedom-fighters took on what they understood to be a suicide mission to take down the "Butcher of Prague," one of the prime authors of the Final Solution.
I've known the story for years. In picking up
Binet's approach is unique. On the cover, the book is called "A Novel." It reads more to me like a book-length personal essay (Binet himself calls it an "infranovel.") What Binet does is write a book about his writing a book about Heydrich and his demise. If that sounds off-putting, I felt a little that way myself as I began reading it. But in the course of things, the power of the story itself takes hold, and the Binet's story and the Heydrich story merge in compelling ways.
When it comes to the assassination itself--as well as its immediate aftermath--even though I know the details, I was riveted by Binet's retelling. At this point I couldn't put the book down, and was profoundly moved. By the last word of the last page, I felt myself merged into the story myself and knew I had been through an experience.
(I think the book will be enjoyed much more by those like me who already know the Heydrich story, as opposed to those who don't.)
I've known the story for years. In picking up
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Laurent Binet's "HHhH," the question I had was, "Can it really be retold in a different, invigorating way?" The answer is yes.Binet's approach is unique. On the cover, the book is called "A Novel." It reads more to me like a book-length personal essay (Binet himself calls it an "infranovel.") What Binet does is write a book about his writing a book about Heydrich and his demise. If that sounds off-putting, I felt a little that way myself as I began reading it. But in the course of things, the power of the story itself takes hold, and the Binet's story and the Heydrich story merge in compelling ways.
When it comes to the assassination itself--as well as its immediate aftermath--even though I know the details, I was riveted by Binet's retelling. At this point I couldn't put the book down, and was profoundly moved. By the last word of the last page, I felt myself merged into the story myself and knew I had been through an experience.
(I think the book will be enjoyed much more by those like me who already know the Heydrich story, as opposed to those who don't.)
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LibraryThing member thorold
This is a "non-fiction novel" in a similar sort of style to those of Javier Cercas, i.e. it combines a relatively objective investigation of a particular set of historical events - in this case the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in May 1942 - with a very subjective account of the
Sometimes Binet's niggling about the verifiability of the past takes on a comic dimension: early in the book he notes that he's told us that Heydrich grew up in "Halle", without realising that there are several towns of that name in Germany and he has no idea which one it was (it turns out to have been Halle-an-der-Saale). There's also a long-running niggle about the colour of Heydrich's car - Binet remembers the Mercedes he saw in a Prague museum as being black, and his girlfriend-of-the-time confirms that, but other writers talk about a green car, and photographs from the time are of course black-and-white. Perhaps it would be possible to settle this doubt somehow (maybe there's still a copy of the order for the car in an archive somewhere), but of course it's not that important - it doesn't materially affect the course of the attack on Heydrich, but it troubles his conscience as a writer that he may be giving us false information, and of course this serves as a symbol of all the thousands of other points of detail that a historian cannot know but a historical novelist would have to supply.
Binet generally follows the convention of pretending that his writing of the book is happening in parallel with our reading, so that if he finds out something new he should have told us about earlier, he doesn't go back and change the earlier chapter, but rather discusses his doubts with us.
It's an interesting exercise, but I think Binet takes on a bit too much. Compared to all the other people who've already written about Wannsee and Theresienstadt and Babi Yar, he can't help coming over as a bit of a lightweight. Cercas has been doing this rather longer, and seems to have a bit more control of where his mind rambles off to in the course of telling the story. But Binet does give us a very compelling account of the assassination itself and of the German operation to track down the attackers, both of which seem to have been beset with accidental difficulties and silly mistakes. It's tempting to say "HMmM..."
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process of researching and writing about those events. Binet tells us about how he came to be interested in Czech and Slovak history and to love Prague above all other cities (he did his French military service as a teacher in Slovakia and later had a Czech girlfriend), how he learnt about the assassination and its consequences, how he reacted to the sources came across as he was researching it, and so on. And of course that leads into discussion of wider issues - about the Nazis and their impact on European history and on our perceptions of how history works, about Heydrich's role in developing and implementing the "Final solution", about the value of resistance to overwhelming force, and about the complicated relationship between history, narrative, and historical fiction.Sometimes Binet's niggling about the verifiability of the past takes on a comic dimension: early in the book he notes that he's told us that Heydrich grew up in "Halle", without realising that there are several towns of that name in Germany and he has no idea which one it was (it turns out to have been Halle-an-der-Saale). There's also a long-running niggle about the colour of Heydrich's car - Binet remembers the Mercedes he saw in a Prague museum as being black, and his girlfriend-of-the-time confirms that, but other writers talk about a green car, and photographs from the time are of course black-and-white. Perhaps it would be possible to settle this doubt somehow (maybe there's still a copy of the order for the car in an archive somewhere), but of course it's not that important - it doesn't materially affect the course of the attack on Heydrich, but it troubles his conscience as a writer that he may be giving us false information, and of course this serves as a symbol of all the thousands of other points of detail that a historian cannot know but a historical novelist would have to supply.
Binet generally follows the convention of pretending that his writing of the book is happening in parallel with our reading, so that if he finds out something new he should have told us about earlier, he doesn't go back and change the earlier chapter, but rather discusses his doubts with us.
It's an interesting exercise, but I think Binet takes on a bit too much. Compared to all the other people who've already written about Wannsee and Theresienstadt and Babi Yar, he can't help coming over as a bit of a lightweight. Cercas has been doing this rather longer, and seems to have a bit more control of where his mind rambles off to in the course of telling the story. But Binet does give us a very compelling account of the assassination itself and of the German operation to track down the attackers, both of which seem to have been beset with accidental difficulties and silly mistakes. It's tempting to say "HMmM..."
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LibraryThing member ecw0647
I have always been fascinated and simultaneously repelled by Heydrich and his ilk. Having read several biographies of the monster, I bought this one.
The antithesis of a straight narrative biography, I discovered it to be quite appealing and interesting, not just in his reflections on Heydrich, but
"Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich", ("Hhhm is literally translated as "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich".) My background in German would idiomatically translate it differently: "Heydrich was Himmler's brain." The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the "Butcher of Prague." Assassinated by some British trained Czech agents, German vengeance was swift and terrible. A town was chosen at random (seemingly, but who knows) and its inhabitants killed and the town completely leveled.
There are trenchant comments and quotes throughout: Daladier, former defense minister of the Popular Front, invokes questions of national defense not to prevent Hitler carving up Czechoslovakia but to backtrack on the forty-hour week—one of the principal gains of the Popular Front. At this level of political stupidity, betrayal becomes almost a work of art....Hitler and Mussolini have already left. Chamberlain yawns ostentatiously, while Daladier tries and fails to hide his agitation behind a façade of embarrassed haughtiness. When the Czechs, crushed, ask if their government is expected to make some kind of declaration in response to this news, it is perhaps shame that removes his ability to speak. (If only it had choked him—him and all the others!) It is therefore left to his colleague to speak, and he does so with such casual arrogance that the Czech foreign minister says afterward, in a laconic remark that all my countrymen should ponder:
As the SD extends its web, Heydrich will discover that he has an unusual gift for bureaucracy, the most important quality for the management of a good spy network. His motto could be: Files! Files! Always more files! In every color. On every subject. Heydrich gets a taste for it very quickly. Information, manipulation, blackmail, and spying become his drugs.
One interesting tidbit I did not know was that Heydrich was a reserve officer in the Luftwaffe. He had hopes of downing an enemy plane, but once, even after becoming head of the SD, he flew his Messerschmidt 109 with a group of German fighters over the eastern front. Sighting a Yak, he assumed it would be an easy kill and swooped down only to discover that while the Yak was slower, it was extremely maneuverable and the Yak pilot led him directly over a Russian anti-aircraft battery. He was shot down and there were many nervous Germans hoping he was either dead or would make his way back to their lines. He knew too much. When he did return two days later, he had earned an Iron Cross, but Hitler forbade him from ever flying any combat missions again.
Heydrich was assassinated (it took him a few days to die, of sepsis, not the actual attempt) just a day before he was to leave for Germany to be reassigned France. Whether the assassination accomplished anything other than his death and the deaths of thousands of people in retribution, is for ethicists to ponder.
The antithesis of a straight narrative biography, I discovered it to be quite appealing and interesting, not just in his reflections on Heydrich, but
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the literature, culture, and historical milieu surrounding the man. The conceit is an unnamed novelist obsessed with researching Heydrich in hopes of writing about his murder as a thriller. He decides instead to provide a running commentary on what he finds rather than invent scenes and dialogue."Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich", ("Hhhm is literally translated as "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich".) My background in German would idiomatically translate it differently: "Heydrich was Himmler's brain." The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the "Butcher of Prague." Assassinated by some British trained Czech agents, German vengeance was swift and terrible. A town was chosen at random (seemingly, but who knows) and its inhabitants killed and the town completely leveled.
There are trenchant comments and quotes throughout: Daladier, former defense minister of the Popular Front, invokes questions of national defense not to prevent Hitler carving up Czechoslovakia but to backtrack on the forty-hour week—one of the principal gains of the Popular Front. At this level of political stupidity, betrayal becomes almost a work of art....Hitler and Mussolini have already left. Chamberlain yawns ostentatiously, while Daladier tries and fails to hide his agitation behind a façade of embarrassed haughtiness. When the Czechs, crushed, ask if their government is expected to make some kind of declaration in response to this news, it is perhaps shame that removes his ability to speak. (If only it had choked him—him and all the others!) It is therefore left to his colleague to speak, and he does so with such casual arrogance that the Czech foreign minister says afterward, in a laconic remark that all my countrymen should ponder:
As the SD extends its web, Heydrich will discover that he has an unusual gift for bureaucracy, the most important quality for the management of a good spy network. His motto could be: Files! Files! Always more files! In every color. On every subject. Heydrich gets a taste for it very quickly. Information, manipulation, blackmail, and spying become his drugs.
One interesting tidbit I did not know was that Heydrich was a reserve officer in the Luftwaffe. He had hopes of downing an enemy plane, but once, even after becoming head of the SD, he flew his Messerschmidt 109 with a group of German fighters over the eastern front. Sighting a Yak, he assumed it would be an easy kill and swooped down only to discover that while the Yak was slower, it was extremely maneuverable and the Yak pilot led him directly over a Russian anti-aircraft battery. He was shot down and there were many nervous Germans hoping he was either dead or would make his way back to their lines. He knew too much. When he did return two days later, he had earned an Iron Cross, but Hitler forbade him from ever flying any combat missions again.
Heydrich was assassinated (it took him a few days to die, of sepsis, not the actual attempt) just a day before he was to leave for Germany to be reassigned France. Whether the assassination accomplished anything other than his death and the deaths of thousands of people in retribution, is for ethicists to ponder.
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LibraryThing member otterley
a post modernist take on Reinhard Heydrich, the blond beast, master of the secret service, author of the holocaust and ruler of Czechoslovakia. The French narrator is writing a book about this, burdened by knowledge and a self defeating quest for accuracy and the truth. It's a tale of heroism, as a
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Czech and a Slovak mount an assassination attempt, supported by the cast of heroic 'little' people who shelter and aid them. And a tale of atrocity, as we follow Heydrich. I found the post modern detachment slightly irritating, but perhaps that's a matter of personal taste... Show Less
LibraryThing member PennyAnne
Brilliant, brilliant book - a 'non-fiction novel' about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague. Haven't read anything this good in a long time - a completely different approach to writing historical fiction which I loved - what the author tells you happened, definitely happened - unless
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it didn't (and then he tells you that too!). Show Less
LibraryThing member kgib
History written somewhat like a novel, but with a commitment to accuracy and bonus meta-commentary on the process of writing history/biography. Also, a story that has some spy/adventure components but keeps the horror of WWII pretty central. It's crazy that this true story isn't more well known.
Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2014)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — Fiction — 2012)
The Morning News Tournament of Books (Short List — 2013)
British Book Award (Shortlist — 2012)
Independent Booksellers' Book Prize (Shortlist — 2013)
Maine Readers' Choice Award (Longlist — 2013)
Waterstones Book of the Year (Shortlist — 2012)
Jan Michalski Prize for Literature (First Selection — 2010)
Europese Literatuurprijs (Longlist — 2011)
French-American Foundation Translation Prize (Shortlist — 2013)
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (Longlist — 2013)
Goncourt du Premier Roman (2010)
The New York Times Notable Books of the Year (Fiction & Poetry — 2012)
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Fiction/Poetry — 2012)
Globe and Mail Top 100 Book (2012)
Language
Original language
French
Original publication date
2009 (French)
2010 (Dutch)
2012 (English)
Physical description
346 p.; 21 cm
ISBN
9789029086851