Author: Jonathan Littell
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 1551993643
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 994
Book Description
“Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened.” Dr. Max Aue, the man at the heart of Jonathan Littell’s stunning and controversial novel The Kindly Ones, personifies the evils of the Second World War and the Holocaust. Highly educated and cultured, he was an ambitious SS officer, a Nazi and mass murderer who was in the upper echelons of the Third Reich. He tells us of his experience during the war. He was present at Auschwitz and Babi Yar, witnessed the battle of Stalingrad, and survived the fall of Berlin — receiving a medal from Hitler personally in the last days of Nazi Germany. Long after the war, he is living a comfortable bourgeois life in France, married with two children, managing a lace factory. And now, having evaded justice, he speaks out, giving a precise and accurate record of his life. The tone of his account is detached, lapidary, and for the most part unrepentant, whether he is describing his participation in mass murder on the Eastern Front, his bureaucratic investigations of labour productivity in the death camps, his casual murder of civilians as he tries to break through Russian lines towards the end of the war, or his fervid and convoluted relationship with his twin sister. Over its course, by entwining Aue’s life with those of historical figures such as Eichmann and Speer, Himmler and indeed Hitler, The Kindly Ones comes to depict the entire architecture of Nazism — from its grandest intellectual pretensions to its most minute, most chilling managerial details and executions. The Kindly Ones presents — with unprecedented realism, meticulous research that is both fascinating and compelling, and brilliant literary accomplishment — the greatest horrors imaginable. “War and murder are a question, a question without an answer, for when you cry out in the night, no one answers,” Aue says. In the same way, this powerfully affecting, powerfully challenging book confronts the reader with the most profound questions about history, morality, and art without offering any easy resolution. Written originally in French, and published now in English for the first time, The Kindly Ones has already sold to date well over a million copies in Europe. In France it won two prestigious prizes, including the Goncourt, and has been compared to War and Peace and other great classics of literature.
The Kindly Ones
Author: Anthony Powell
Publisher: Arrow Books
ISBN: 9780749306526
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
The sixth in a sequence of novels collectively titled A Dance to the Music of Time. More than 300 characters are choreographed over a period of 70 years, starting with A Question of Upbringing.
Publisher: Arrow Books
ISBN: 9780749306526
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
The sixth in a sequence of novels collectively titled A Dance to the Music of Time. More than 300 characters are choreographed over a period of 70 years, starting with A Question of Upbringing.
The Kindly Ones
Author: Cliff James
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781590216903
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
The old world has broken down. There are two ways that the new world can go. In the aftermath of a global catastrophe, three women and a boy take shelter in a deserted village within a vast, unfathomable forest. Unknown beasts lurk on the edge of the forest and hide in the heart of this village, but Fran, Rhea, Ky and the boy called Lugh are determined to build a new society and keep the flame of civilization alive. Their refuge seems secure until the arrival of the Mann family: a pack of devout brothers and their pious mother. The new family is invited to stay and an unlikely relationship develops between Lugh and Abel, the youngest of the Mann brothers. In time, tensions grow as the newcomers impose their religious control over the life of the community. As secrets are exposed and the clash of values turns violent, chaos descends and the beast that lurks beyond the edge of civilization closes in on the village. The survivors will have to decide whether they must sacrifice their humanity to save their lives.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781590216903
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
The old world has broken down. There are two ways that the new world can go. In the aftermath of a global catastrophe, three women and a boy take shelter in a deserted village within a vast, unfathomable forest. Unknown beasts lurk on the edge of the forest and hide in the heart of this village, but Fran, Rhea, Ky and the boy called Lugh are determined to build a new society and keep the flame of civilization alive. Their refuge seems secure until the arrival of the Mann family: a pack of devout brothers and their pious mother. The new family is invited to stay and an unlikely relationship develops between Lugh and Abel, the youngest of the Mann brothers. In time, tensions grow as the newcomers impose their religious control over the life of the community. As secrets are exposed and the clash of values turns violent, chaos descends and the beast that lurks beyond the edge of civilization closes in on the village. The survivors will have to decide whether they must sacrifice their humanity to save their lives.
Writing the Holocaust Today
Author: Aurelie Barjonet
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042035862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267
Book Description
Originally written in French, The Kindly Ones (2006) is the first major work of the Jewish-American author Jonathan Littell. Its extraordinary critical and commercial success, spawning a series of heated debates, has made this publication one of the most significant literary phenomena of recent years. Taking the Holocaust as its central topic, The Kindly Ones is a disturbing novel: disturbing in its use of explicit sexual descriptions, in its construction of a perverted psychic world, in its combination of accurate historical descriptions and myths, and in its repeated suggestion that Nazism does not, in fact, lie outside the spectrum of humanness. Due to its striking monumental proportions and the author's provocative choice to recount historical events from the perpetrator's perspective, this opus marks a significant shift within Holocaust literature. In this volume, fourteen leading literary scholars and historians from eight different countries closely study this unsettling work. They examine the disconcerting aspects of the novel including the use of the Nazi viewpoint, analyze the aesthetics of the novel and its contradictions, and explore its relations with several literary traditions. They outline Littell's use of historical details and materials and study the novel's reception. This compilation of essays is essential to anyone intrigued by The Kindly Ones or by the Holocaust and who wishes to gain a better understanding of them.
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042035862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267
Book Description
Originally written in French, The Kindly Ones (2006) is the first major work of the Jewish-American author Jonathan Littell. Its extraordinary critical and commercial success, spawning a series of heated debates, has made this publication one of the most significant literary phenomena of recent years. Taking the Holocaust as its central topic, The Kindly Ones is a disturbing novel: disturbing in its use of explicit sexual descriptions, in its construction of a perverted psychic world, in its combination of accurate historical descriptions and myths, and in its repeated suggestion that Nazism does not, in fact, lie outside the spectrum of humanness. Due to its striking monumental proportions and the author's provocative choice to recount historical events from the perpetrator's perspective, this opus marks a significant shift within Holocaust literature. In this volume, fourteen leading literary scholars and historians from eight different countries closely study this unsettling work. They examine the disconcerting aspects of the novel including the use of the Nazi viewpoint, analyze the aesthetics of the novel and its contradictions, and explore its relations with several literary traditions. They outline Littell's use of historical details and materials and study the novel's reception. This compilation of essays is essential to anyone intrigued by The Kindly Ones or by the Holocaust and who wishes to gain a better understanding of them.
The Age of Entitlement
Author: Christopher Caldwell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1501106910
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
A major American intellectual and “one of the right’s most gifted and astute journalists” (The New York Times Book Review) makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled—and ready to put an adventurer in the White House. Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences and his conclusion is this: even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high—in wealth, freedom, and social stability—and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations. Caldwell reveals the real political turning points of the past half-century, taking you on a roller-coaster ride through Playboy magazine, affirmative action, CB radio, leveraged buyouts, iPhones, Oxycotin, Black Lives Matter, and internet cookies. In doing so, he shows that attempts to redress the injustices of the past have left Americans living under two different ideas of what it means to play by the rules. Essential, timely, hard to put down, The Age of Entitlement “is an eloquent and bracing book, full of insight” (New York magazine) about how the reforms of the past fifty years gave the country two incompatible political systems—and drove it toward conflict.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1501106910
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
A major American intellectual and “one of the right’s most gifted and astute journalists” (The New York Times Book Review) makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled—and ready to put an adventurer in the White House. Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences and his conclusion is this: even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high—in wealth, freedom, and social stability—and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations. Caldwell reveals the real political turning points of the past half-century, taking you on a roller-coaster ride through Playboy magazine, affirmative action, CB radio, leveraged buyouts, iPhones, Oxycotin, Black Lives Matter, and internet cookies. In doing so, he shows that attempts to redress the injustices of the past have left Americans living under two different ideas of what it means to play by the rules. Essential, timely, hard to put down, The Age of Entitlement “is an eloquent and bracing book, full of insight” (New York magazine) about how the reforms of the past fifty years gave the country two incompatible political systems—and drove it toward conflict.
The Sandman: The kindly ones
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Death
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
An attempt to summon and imprison Death, instead results in the capture of her brother, Morpheus, the Sandman, who after making his escape must regain the tools of his powers. Follow the King of Dreams, brother of the Endless, as he travels through myriad landscapes to meet with the gods, demons, and others who inhabit Earth and the other realms.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Death
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
An attempt to summon and imprison Death, instead results in the capture of her brother, Morpheus, the Sandman, who after making his escape must regain the tools of his powers. Follow the King of Dreams, brother of the Endless, as he travels through myriad landscapes to meet with the gods, demons, and others who inhabit Earth and the other realms.
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell (Book Analysis)
Author: Bright Summaries
Publisher: BrightSummaries.com
ISBN: 2806279852
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 27
Book Description
Unlock the more straightforward side of The Kindly Ones with this concise and insightful summary and analysis! This engaging summary presents an analysis of The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell, the gripping and graphic story of Max Aue, an SS officer during World War II, who is forced to bear the weight of the atrocities he has contributed to, his increasingly incestuous fantasies and even the fact that he is wanted for murder. Despite being the subject of widespread scandal and mixed critical and public opinion, the novel received two prestigious French literary prizes after it was published, including the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Académie Française. Littell is a French-American author with a Jewish background, who became known following the publication of this work, which also received the 2009 British Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Find out everything you need to know about The Kindly Ones in a fraction of the time! This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you:• A complete plot summary• Character studies• Key themes and symbols• Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com?Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you in your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!
Publisher: BrightSummaries.com
ISBN: 2806279852
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 27
Book Description
Unlock the more straightforward side of The Kindly Ones with this concise and insightful summary and analysis! This engaging summary presents an analysis of The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell, the gripping and graphic story of Max Aue, an SS officer during World War II, who is forced to bear the weight of the atrocities he has contributed to, his increasingly incestuous fantasies and even the fact that he is wanted for murder. Despite being the subject of widespread scandal and mixed critical and public opinion, the novel received two prestigious French literary prizes after it was published, including the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Académie Française. Littell is a French-American author with a Jewish background, who became known following the publication of this work, which also received the 2009 British Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Find out everything you need to know about The Kindly Ones in a fraction of the time! This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you:• A complete plot summary• Character studies• Key themes and symbols• Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com?Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you in your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!
Evil in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature
Author: Scott M. Powers
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443826162
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
Evil remains a primary source of inquiry in contemporary literature of French expression, even among its most secular writers. In considering French-speaking authors from France, Belgium, the United States, the Maghreb, and Sub-Saharan Africa, this collection delineates a rich international perspective on some of the most disturbing events of our time. Each essay testifies to the urgency expressed in works of fiction to give an account of human catastrophes, from the Shoah and the Rwandan genocide to the terrorist attacks of September 11, and the ongoing oppression of women in Islamic nations. Themes underlying this volume include an investigation into the origins of evil, its representations in writing, and the ethical responsibilities of authors who write on human suffering. Contemporary fiction on evil confronts us with fundamental questions: Can evil be attributed to intentionality, is evil “subconscious,” or is it the result of impersonal forces? Which styles of writing are ethically appropriate or effective for depicting evil? Can we speak of a veritable “poetics of evil” shared by contemporary authors? When does a literary text on evil become “evil”? In providing informed and nuanced answers to these important questions, the scholars engage in crucial theories of psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and post-modernism, address a number of issues raised by trauma and genocide studies, and draw from critical frameworks in literary theory on testimony, the limits of representing the extreme, and “transgressive” writing.
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443826162
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
Evil remains a primary source of inquiry in contemporary literature of French expression, even among its most secular writers. In considering French-speaking authors from France, Belgium, the United States, the Maghreb, and Sub-Saharan Africa, this collection delineates a rich international perspective on some of the most disturbing events of our time. Each essay testifies to the urgency expressed in works of fiction to give an account of human catastrophes, from the Shoah and the Rwandan genocide to the terrorist attacks of September 11, and the ongoing oppression of women in Islamic nations. Themes underlying this volume include an investigation into the origins of evil, its representations in writing, and the ethical responsibilities of authors who write on human suffering. Contemporary fiction on evil confronts us with fundamental questions: Can evil be attributed to intentionality, is evil “subconscious,” or is it the result of impersonal forces? Which styles of writing are ethically appropriate or effective for depicting evil? Can we speak of a veritable “poetics of evil” shared by contemporary authors? When does a literary text on evil become “evil”? In providing informed and nuanced answers to these important questions, the scholars engage in crucial theories of psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and post-modernism, address a number of issues raised by trauma and genocide studies, and draw from critical frameworks in literary theory on testimony, the limits of representing the extreme, and “transgressive” writing.
The Kindly Ones
Author: Melissa Scott
Publisher: Crossroad Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 506
Book Description
Orestes was a cruel world, cold and inhospitable. Its first colonists were castaways from a crash landing, cling to survival through the institution of strict socio political pontrols. Over the generations life grew somewhat easier, but the code of honour remained. Misdeeds and errors were paid for with blood. At one time all miscreants were executed. Now a social death is imposed. Every Oresteian city has colony of “ghosts”: ostracised citizens who must survive, somehow, without help from the living. But galactic civilisation is spreading and Orestes is in its path. The old ways are under scrutiny. And though the Oresteian aristocracy will fight for the status quo, they have not reckoned on the power of a thousand ghosts.
Publisher: Crossroad Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 506
Book Description
Orestes was a cruel world, cold and inhospitable. Its first colonists were castaways from a crash landing, cling to survival through the institution of strict socio political pontrols. Over the generations life grew somewhat easier, but the code of honour remained. Misdeeds and errors were paid for with blood. At one time all miscreants were executed. Now a social death is imposed. Every Oresteian city has colony of “ghosts”: ostracised citizens who must survive, somehow, without help from the living. But galactic civilisation is spreading and Orestes is in its path. The old ways are under scrutiny. And though the Oresteian aristocracy will fight for the status quo, they have not reckoned on the power of a thousand ghosts.