The Kindly Ones

De: Jonathan Littell

Narrado por: Grover Gardner

"Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened." So begins the chilling fictional memoir of Dr. Maximilien Aue, a former Nazi officer who has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France.

Max is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man, we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews.

During the period from June 1941 through April 1945, Max is posted to Poland, the Ukraine, and the Caucasus; he is present at the Battle of Stalingrad and at Auschwitz; and he lives through the chaos of the final days of the Nazi regime in Berlin.

Although Max is a totally imagined character, his world is peopled by real historical figures, such as Eichmann, Himmler, Göring, Speer, Heydrich, Höss, and Hitler himself.

A supreme historical epic and a haunting work of fiction, Jonathan Littell's masterpiece is intense, hallucinatory, and utterly original. Published to impressive critical acclaim in France in 2006, it went on to win the Prix Goncourt, that country's most prestigious literary award, and sparked a broad range of responses and questions from readers: How does fiction deal with the nature of human evil? How should a novel encompass the Holocaust? At what point do history and fiction come together and where do they separate?

©2009 Jonathan Littel (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers

Great recording of interesting but lengthy book

Any additional comments?

The SS officer, sent to different theaters of WWII, narrates his experiences, ranging from comical to harrowing, in a calm, somewhat detached manner. This contrasts with the tremendous emotional and physical injuries he sustains along the way.
He frequently ruminates on why and how ordinary German soldiers and leaders perpetuated war crimes and crimes against humanity individually and on a grand scale. These passages are thoughtful but still unsatisfying.
He indulges in grotesque and fetishistic sexual fantasies, as well as senseless violence, which increase in frequency and intensity toward the end. These reveal the depth of his inner turmoil and unhappiness, bordering on madness, but go farther than necessary to make the point; by the end, they become unpleasant and irritating distractions, and likewise unsatisfying in helping the reader understand Max better.
The war takes him to Kiev in 1941, the Caucuses and Stalingrad in 1942, Crimea and Italy in 1943, Auschwitz in 1944, and Berlin until the end of the war. The descriptions of real German officers and leaders, Russian locals, attitudes, events, and horrors of war are absolutely superb.
The recording is excellent, as the narrator does a great job getting through lengthy, rambling passages, that may be otherwise hard to get through. He brings to life dialogues between characters, that would take mental effort to read through and unravel.

Read or listen only if you have a strong stomach.

An excellent take on a fictional SS officer, who rubs shoulders with many historical figures, and some not so well known. Another excellent narration by Grover Gardner.

Intense

This is a very intense book to get through. The violence is very blunt and macabre the sex is full on shock value and the morals leave you questioning the whole book. But it’s very well written and gives such a great description of WW2 from a side not often explored.

The one insanity of war keeps coming round to drive the protagonist even more deranged with each day.

This book took me a long time to read. Often I had to stop for my own mental health but in the end I am wowed by how much has been captured so accurately by the author and narrator.

Shocking yet compelling

I found this book to be shocking but so well written that I thought the author had to have been there. The narrator was excellent. During the book I wavered between empathy for Max and revulsion. However, at the end of the book, when I though I had been shocked as much as possible, I was shocked again. I actually did something I seldom do. At the end of the book, I started at the beginning again.

Mesmerising

A tour de force. The amount of research, the historic accuracy (see Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder), the soulless protagonist and his perversions (they enliven the character but in no way “explain” his acceptance and active participation in the nazi horrors), EVERYTHING contributes to this masterpiece.
I bought it because I couldn’t find the original French version. I read it when it was published and I was in shock. The translation is good, without being exceptional, losing something of the horrendous lyricism of the Nazis, extraordinarily rendered in the original version. But it preserves the essential: how an “intellectual” became a monster.
This is a “livre-monde”, a book that recreates a world per se, and this world is hell.
The Shoah by bullets (Babi Yar and so many others sites of horror), the death camps, the deportations, the destruction of the European Jews, the gas vans, invented by the Stalinists and reimplemented by the Nazis…
A lesson in history.
The so-called digressions (linguistics, politics, music, literature etc.) enhance the monstrosity of the main character and his peers.
And yes, there are shocking descriptions of bodily functions, there is incest, rape, They show how amorality led to immorality, and finally to a serial killer’s perverse mind.
Do not read it if you expect euphemisms.
But do read it if you want some understanding of a mass crime that may be committed again. Because sadly, hatred is a part of human nature.

Excellent Work

This is an excellent story about the horrors of Germany and WWII. The work could have used some editing, but in summary it was worth the listen.

not for the faint hearted

the performance of this book was excellently delivered the narrator it feels certainly captured the tone of the story and protagonist. the book itself will challenge you on every level of your morality , I'm not sure what else to say about it. if you read it then you are sure to understand.

2 Star Book - 5 Star Narration

Almost a month listening/reading this book... What a long read. I desperately wanted it to be over, but it was dragging...

I cannot imagine how long the war must have been for those who suffered through it. It is hard to imagine the horrors, but Mr Littell shows it to us. Unfortunately, he does that using too many graphic details which, for the one not accustomed to those, seems to be excessive.

It is excessive.

I could only finish this book because it is hard for me to leave one alone without finishing it. I wanted to know where he wanted to take us with the story of Max Aue, a German/French WWII war criminal. Yes, criminal. In so many ways...

No, fortunately, we are not all like Aue. I hope that, if we were in a situation similar to those in the lower ranks of a country and lived in a situation like he lived, we would act differently. Well, in lower or higher ranks, for that matter.

Despite having many good philosophical questions and serious debates on the why's of the war and the choices that were taken, I DO NOT recommend the book. I don't believe we need to revive terrible situations in excessive detail to understand the deeper questions and problems of any war.

Having said that, unfortunately, I think that the book will stay with me for a while, more than I would hope for.

Once again, even knowing that when we DON'T recommend something, this ends up being a recommendation for some, I DO NOT recommend it.

P.s.: some parts of the ending are laughable (too much on the nose, someone?) and quite unbelievable, as if the author, seeing that the book was already too long, decided to rush things because he didn't want to make it even longer and cross the 1000 pages threshold.

P.s.2: the narrator is fabulous. The German accent seemed very German to my untrained ears. On the other hand, the French one, threw me off a little. Fortunately there is little french in the text. I would definitely listen to more perfromances from Grover Gardner.

from conformity to mass murder- brilliant narrator

The audiobook of "The Kindly Ones" by Jonathan Littell features an outstanding performance by the narrator, capturing the complex emotions and nuances of the protagonist journey through World War II. The vivid narration brings to life the inner turmoil of Max Aue, a former SS officer, grappling with his involvement in atrocities. Littell's meticulous historical research is evident in the detailed descriptions of wartime Europe.. The novel delves deep into moral ambiguity, challenging readers to confront uncomfortable truths about human nature and the horrors of war. Overall, the audiobook of "The Kindly Ones" is a powerful and thought-provoking experience, enriched by its skilled narration and profound storytelling.
The unsettling duality within human nature—the coexistence of civility with the capacity for profound cruelty is profoundly disturbing. In a way reminds me of Hannah Arendt's The Banality of Evil which describes how ordinary individuals can unwittingly perpetrate unspeakable crimes through bureaucratic conformity and mob mentality, Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones exposes how the veneer of everyday normality can conceal a deep capacity for cruelty.

Great book

The author has created a scholarly work of historical fiction that relates the madness of the SS and nazi Germany's decline and fall. The insanity of the main character is disturbing. I could not wait to learn how his world unraveled. Its story is what I would have expected the life of an SS officer to be like (weren't they all insane?). One of the cogs in the machinery attempting to use the Jews as slave laborers, to aid the nazi war effort, battling with the characters that wanted to carry out the "final solution" as quickly as possible. If one has studied any of the history of the nazis you cannot help be awed at the depth of research this author must have done to paint the story in its historical context. The imagery is will written. A very engaging book, but, as the Time's reviewer stated -- it's not for the squeamish.

The narrator did a great job. kudos to him.