What we are Reading

Littell’s book may sometimes weary, all of its near 1,000 pages, but it takes us on a moral journey, one that begs searing questions. What would you and I have done if the Nazis marched into the GPO? (General Post Office,Dublin) Littell, who in the first person depicts the cynicism and amorality of a senior German officer, has not written another War and Peace as is claimed. His work is altogether more horrifying.
From the respectability of his lace factory in France the former officer ruminates on a life badly lived, his role in atrocities, his mechanical sex encounters and the “artificial distinction” between war and genocide. In total war “there is no such thing as a civilian”. “The only difference between the Jewish child gassed or shot and the German child burned alive in an air raid is one of method”, says the man who concludes that nearly everyone in a given set of circumstances does what he or she is told to do.
Not for the sensitive!

The Kindly Ones,
Jonathan Littell, Chatto and Windus, London (€ 14.99)

Reviewed by Paul Murray


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