It's called "Les Bienveillantes".
Quote:
It is 900 pages of closely typed text, in French, with harrowing details of torture, mass executions, the bureaucratic battles at the heart of the Third Reich, incest, matricide and homosexual encounters - and now it has sparked an international publishing feeding frenzy.
Tomorrow, the bar of Frankfurt's Hessicher Hof, the period hotel that is the favoured luxury hangout of the publishing elite, will be packed on the eve of the city's annual book fair - and there will be only one topic of conversation.
'Everyone is desperate to get their hands on it. The sums being spoken about are astronomical,' said one literary agent.
Seasoned observers are talking about 'very significant six-figure sums' for the English-language rights to the book. 'There's a bidding war, so the sky's the limit,' said an analyst. 'Think of a figure and add lots of noughts.'
Nobody, least of all first-time author Jonathan Littell or his French publishers, Gallimard, expected such success. A single review in a Berlin newspaper provoked a flood of inquiries at Littell's London agents and a major deal was concluded with a German publisher last week.
Les Bienveillantes (The Furies) has stayed at the top of the French bestseller list since its publication a month ago. With 100,000 copies sold, it is listed for major literary prizes and French critics have lauded the book in terms unheard for many years.
'A stunning saga in the tradition of the great Russians,' said Le Monde, comparing Littell, an American educated in France, to Tolstoy. Marc Fumaroli, of the French Academy, called it 'an enormous saucepan thumped down on the table of a literary public dying of hunger'. For Le Point magazine, it is 'enormous, black, incandescent, the sort of book we thought was now impossible'.
Les Bienveillantes is the fictional memoirs of Dr Maximilien Aue, a Waffen-SS officer, and readers are plunged into a labyrinth of **** bureaucracy and mass murder.
It took its author four months to write after four years of research. Littell, son of US spy thriller writer Robert Littell, is a former aid worker who attributes his fascination with 'the banality of evil' to meeting genocidal killers in the Balkans and seeing mass graves in Chechnya and Africa.
Tomorrow, the bar of Frankfurt's Hessicher Hof, the period hotel that is the favoured luxury hangout of the publishing elite, will be packed on the eve of the city's annual book fair - and there will be only one topic of conversation.
'Everyone is desperate to get their hands on it. The sums being spoken about are astronomical,' said one literary agent.
Seasoned observers are talking about 'very significant six-figure sums' for the English-language rights to the book. 'There's a bidding war, so the sky's the limit,' said an analyst. 'Think of a figure and add lots of noughts.'
Nobody, least of all first-time author Jonathan Littell or his French publishers, Gallimard, expected such success. A single review in a Berlin newspaper provoked a flood of inquiries at Littell's London agents and a major deal was concluded with a German publisher last week.
Les Bienveillantes (The Furies) has stayed at the top of the French bestseller list since its publication a month ago. With 100,000 copies sold, it is listed for major literary prizes and French critics have lauded the book in terms unheard for many years.
'A stunning saga in the tradition of the great Russians,' said Le Monde, comparing Littell, an American educated in France, to Tolstoy. Marc Fumaroli, of the French Academy, called it 'an enormous saucepan thumped down on the table of a literary public dying of hunger'. For Le Point magazine, it is 'enormous, black, incandescent, the sort of book we thought was now impossible'.
Les Bienveillantes is the fictional memoirs of Dr Maximilien Aue, a Waffen-SS officer, and readers are plunged into a labyrinth of **** bureaucracy and mass murder.
It took its author four months to write after four years of research. Littell, son of US spy thriller writer Robert Littell, is a former aid worker who attributes his fascination with 'the banality of evil' to meeting genocidal killers in the Balkans and seeing mass graves in Chechnya and Africa.
I was in Paris last week-end, and so I bought it and started reading it.
I was amazed.
First of all by how well the author writes. It is on a par with the best contemporary French writers. And when you know how incredibly difficult litterary written French is, this is an extraordinary achievment. I don't think 0.1% of the population could write as well as that.
Second, eventhough I'm only a 100 pages in, this book is truely fascinating. It is not surprising he has been compared to the great Russian writers.
I don't know when its coming out in English, but keep an eye out for it.
His only previous book was a slightly crappy (allegedly) sci-fi book that took place in paris, but was written in English.
Anyway, most repect to this guy. He did something which no one in France would've ever thought possible.
This is the link for the French version, for all you Francophones out there.
Yep, all two of you.
Edited, Oct 12th 2006 at 5:41am PDT by RedPhoenixxxxxx
