hhhh. laurent binet

By Laurent Binet

Book Overview

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Two men have been enlisted to kill the head of the Gestapo. This is Operation Anthropoid, Prague, 1942: two Czechoslovakian parachutists sent on a daring mission by London to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich - chief of the Nazi secret services, 'the hangman of Prague', 'the blond beast', 'the most dangerous man in the Third Reich'. His boss is Heinrich Himmler but everyone in the SS says 'Himmler's brain is called Heydrich', which in German spells HHhH.

HHhH is a panorama of the Third Reich told through the life of one outstandingly brutal man, a story of unbearable heroism and loyalty, revenge and betrayal. It is a moving and shattering work of fiction.
Laurent Binet's highly anticipated new novel, The Seventh Function of Language, is available for pre-order now...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0099555646
• ISBN13: 9780099555643
• Release Date: January 2013
• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.7" x 0.8" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

If you don't know anything about historical research IT'S NOT FOR YOU

I love this book not just for the narrative of two WWII Czech and Slav heroes parachuting in to kill the Butcher of Prague but because of the way Binet writes in short segments, bouncing between past and present of writing the book and the villains, heroes, and bureaucrats of WWII. Anyone who has had to do research understands that a lot of choices have to be made about how much you have to lie to fill in the gaps when not all the data is present. It's sympathy. Additionally how the author writes doesn't hide behind fictionalization. Hundreds of thousands of people were executed by believers and opportunists, murders were systematically designed by brilliant fools, and the book shows just how cruel a mundane chauvinist looking for a promotion can be.

Awful!

Binet goes to extraordinary and sadly very successful lengths to make a book about World War 2 heroes instead about what a terrible author he is. He spends more pages whining about writing the book than actually telling the story. Truly one of the worst and, frankly, most embarrassing books I’ve ever read.