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HHhH
HHhH
HHhH
Audiobook10 hours

HHhH

Written by Laurent Binet

Narrated by John Lee

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

HHhH: "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich," or "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich." The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the "Butcher of Prague." He was feared by all and loathed by most. With his cold Aryan features and implacable cruelty, Heydrich seemed indestructible-until two men, a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service-killed him in broad daylight on a bustling street in Prague, and thus changed the course of History.Who were these men, arguably two of the most discreet heroes of the twentieth century? In Laurent Binet's captivating debut novel, we follow Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis from their dramatic escape of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to England; from their recruitment to their harrowing parachute drop into a war zone, from their stealth attack on Heydrich's car to their own brutal death in the basement of a Prague church.A seemingly effortlessly blend of historical truth, personal memory, and Laurent Binet's remarkable imagination, HHhH-an international bestseller and winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman-is a work at once thrilling and intellectually engrossing, a fast-paced novel of the Second World War that is also a profound meditation on the nature of writing and the debt we owe to history.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 13, 2012
ISBN9781452679082
HHhH
Author

Laurent Binet

Laurent Binet was born in Paris, France, in 1972. His first novel, HHhH, was named one of the fifty best books of 2015 by The New York Times and received the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman. He is a professor at the University of Paris III, where he lectures on French literature. His other novels include The Seventh Function of Language and Civilizations.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A clever and moving, self-examining novelization of the assassination of Heydrich - translated from French. Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    10. HHhH by Laurent Binet (2009, 327 page trade paperback, read Jan 9 - Feb 2)translated from French by Sam TaylorI get intimidated by books, actually I find the intimidation an odd form of attraction. But there was nothing to worry about here. For such a dour subject, this was a really fun book. Binet gives a history of the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich during WWII. Heydrich was a key Nazi leader. He was also very young and considered a possible successor the Hitler at some point in the future. He was assassinated in Prague on May 27, 1942 by a two men flown in from England. One was a Slovak, Jozef Gabčík, and the other was a Czech, Jan Kubiš. When the Nazi's couldn't find the assassins they randomly wiped out the Czech town of Lidice, killing all the men, almost all the children and imprisoning all the women in Ravensbrück concentration camp. And then they advertised the massacre, resulting a something like a PR blow with a major popular backlash. Lidice became a rally point for all allied countries. There is a lot of death in this book, as goes with the subject of WWII.That is all interesting, but it's Binet's style that makes the book work and keeps it entertaining. It's written as if the narrator is telling the reader about his process of research, as if the book itself were a journal of an obsessed researcher. He talks about struggling to capture the experience of history when capturing it is impossible. And he can't even know himself what the experiences really were like. I would argue the book is highly stylized and does not feel not like a real journal. The writing is too clean and neat and too simple with no slang and few casual mannerism of expression. This is a bit ironic because he contrasts himself with the wordy introductions of Victor Hugo and then tells us, "So I've decided not to overstylize my story." Yet, that is exactly what he has done. But, it works, it's enjoyable, sad and thought provoking on several levels. Recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The title of this novel stands for the phrase Himmler Hirn heißt Heydrich or “Himmler’s brain is named Heydrich” and it tells the story of the rise of Reinhard Heydrich and the assassination plot that brought him down in Prague in 1942. The incredible true story of Operation Anthropoid is interwoven with the author acting as narrator and recounting how he researched and wrote the book. It is a bizarre combination of story telling and the writer’s perspective on telling the story, so if you don’t enjoy meta commentary this might not be for you. While it could be pretentious at times, I found both sides of the novel fascinating. HHhH won the Prix Goncourt for best debut novel, which is how it got on my radar (as I’m trying to read French novels regularly this year).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    One of those books that people either like or dislike depending on whether or not they appreciate the style. I liked it! After all, how can a historian separate himself from the history he tries to write? A historical novel about the assassination attempt on the life of Reinhard Heydrich, the people involved, the WW2 milieu and the aftermath.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A post-modern telling of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague, a canonically evil Nazi who "adminstered" Moravia and Bohemia during the Nazi occupation. The story of the assassination itself is interesting and inspiring, but book is noteworthy mostly because of the way it subverts the genre. The narration is centered on the author's experience writing the book and his obsession with the subject. There are many digressions, the most interesting of which center of the ethics and faithfulness of "narrative nonfiction." At times, it's almost Knausgardian. Maybe call it auto-nonfiction. Highly recommended, even for those not necessarily interested in the history.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I have always been fascinated and simultaneously repelled by Heydrich and his ilk. Having read several biographies of the monster, I bought this one. The antithesis of a straight narrative biography, I discovered it to be quite appealing and interesting, not just in his reflections on Heydrich, but the literature, culture, and historical milieu surrounding the man. The conceit is an unnamed novelist obsessed with researching Heydrich in hopes of writing about his murder as a thriller. He decides instead to provide a running commentary on what he finds rather than invent scenes and dialogue."Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich", ("Hhhm is literally translated as "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich".) My background in German would idiomatically translate it differently: "Heydrich was Himmler's brain." The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the "Butcher of Prague." Assassinated by some British trained Czech agents, German vengeance was swift and terrible. A town was chosen at random (seemingly, but who knows) and its inhabitants killed and the town completely leveled. There are trenchant comments and quotes throughout: Daladier, former defense minister of the Popular Front, invokes questions of national defense not to prevent Hitler carving up Czechoslovakia but to backtrack on the forty-hour week—one of the principal gains of the Popular Front. At this level of political stupidity, betrayal becomes almost a work of art....Hitler and Mussolini have already left. Chamberlain yawns ostentatiously, while Daladier tries and fails to hide his agitation behind a façade of embarrassed haughtiness. When the Czechs, crushed, ask if their government is expected to make some kind of declaration in response to this news, it is perhaps shame that removes his ability to speak. (If only it had choked him—him and all the others!) It is therefore left to his colleague to speak, and he does so with such casual arrogance that the Czech foreign minister says afterward, in a laconic remark that all my countrymen should ponder:As the SD extends its web, Heydrich will discover that he has an unusual gift for bureaucracy, the most important quality for the management of a good spy network. His motto could be: Files! Files! Always more files! In every color. On every subject. Heydrich gets a taste for it very quickly. Information, manipulation, blackmail, and spying become his drugs.One interesting tidbit I did not know was that Heydrich was a reserve officer in the Luftwaffe. He had hopes of downing an enemy plane, but once, even after becoming head of the SD, he flew his Messerschmidt 109 with a group of German fighters over the eastern front. Sighting a Yak, he assumed it would be an easy kill and swooped down only to discover that while the Yak was slower, it was extremely maneuverable and the Yak pilot led him directly over a Russian anti-aircraft battery. He was shot down and there were many nervous Germans hoping he was either dead or would make his way back to their lines. He knew too much. When he did return two days later, he had earned an Iron Cross, but Hitler forbade him from ever flying any combat missions again.Heydrich was assassinated (it took him a few days to die, of sepsis, not the actual attempt) just a day before he was to leave for Germany to be reassigned France. Whether the assassination accomplished anything other than his death and the deaths of thousands of people in retribution, is for ethicists to ponder.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I never knew about Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. There are many stories from the Second World War which I never learnt in school. It's fascinating discovering them. What makes this book special are both the fascinating true events and the way the author explains them to us. Even if you aren't interested in history or the Second World War, you will enjoy reading this book. It's exciting and touching.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    HHhH by Laurent BinetLaurent Binet at an early age was told the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and, from that day on, developed an obsession resulting in his writing HHhH.Considered a novel it is more a hybrid; the story of how Heydrich was killed, coupled with a description of how Binet’s years of research culminated in the publication of HHhH.HHhH is an abbreviation of Himmler’s Hirn heist Heydrich which translates to Himmler’s Brain is called Heydrich. Reinhard Heydrich was an ambitious young man whose desires, and womanizing led him to be mustered out of the German Navy. Without a clear direction he wrangled an interview with Hitler’s right hand, Himmler, and acing the interview he quickly climbed the ranks of the infamous SS. He hired Eichmann, developed the plans called The Final Solution which Goering endorsed and signed on 7/31/41.Once the war begins Heydrich is installed as the “protecktor” of Czechoslovakia. It is there that the story that Binet tells intersperses with the resistance that the former President of the Czech’s, Benes, directs from the confines of London. Indeed, the Czech and Slovak people become a major force in Britain’s struggles against the Nazis. A good proportion of the RAF are manned with pilots from Benes’s command. In London, a group of parachutists are trained to be dropped in Czechoslovakia to sabotage the Nazi advances. There Józef Gabcik and Jan Kubis are picked to carry out the killing of Heydrich.Heydrich proves himself to be ruthless, merciless and is dubbed The Blond Beast. Still in his mid-30s he has ambition to become next in command to the Fuhrer and, one day, even supplant Hitler as leader of the German Republic. “Hitler respects Heydrich because he combines fierceness with efficiency. If you add to this his loyalty toward the Fuhrer, you get the three elements that make the perfect Nazi…Hitler knows that H is a rising star ready to do anything to further his own ambitions.”.Heydrich draws high marks from his higher ups for his treatment of Jews and traitors. In Chapter 111 , a brief two page entry, Binet writes a chilling description of the execution of 33,771 Jews from Kiev in the trenches of Babi Yar (September 29-30, 1941). Reading this passage sent a chill through me.Much of the book relates how Gabcik and Kubis interact with the extensive network of partisans and resistors in Prague and the Czech countryside. These are people that need to be heroized for their efforts in resisting and combatting the Nazi horrors.That this historical story is “novelized” allows Laurent to have license to describe events in a way that “might have occurred”. Given his years of research though, he leans heavily on documents and firsthand accounts to keep the story alive. He pulls in obscure facts and stories to paint a fuller picture of life under Nazi rule. In Chapter 112 he depicts how the Dynamo FC of Kiev defeats the German Luftwaffe team to the delight of the Ukrainian crowd and the team from Kiev is then executed for the humiliation.Binet has created a unique technique of storytelling. He freely reflects on the years long process and research he endured to write HHhH. He sites other books written about the events described and very often judges his own efforts less than successful. Despite his own judgment he has created a worthwhile tale that keeps the reader engaged and involved. The book was awarded the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman in 2009.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I think the author needs a tad more humility and maturity and the book needs serious editing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Stunning, moving, thrilling, and intelligent.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    All the self conscious ruminations on history and novel writing seem chatty rather than deep. The book adds nothing to my fairly slight knowledge of the holocaust. There were all bad guys and all good guys and they fought. The bad guys were extremely bad the good guys were extremely brave. The book was listenable especially at the end when he actually told the story. Maybe it was beautifully written and i miss that in the translation.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A metafictional historical thriller set around the true story of the killing of Reinhard Heydrich, a particularly evil high ranking Nazi. Simultaneously telling the story in as factually an accurate way as possible, the author also comments on the nature of trying to write about true events, and comments on the role of memory in both fiction and life. This is a daring conceit, and while it does not work all the time, the author supports his thesis enough to make the book an interesting and thought provoking read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Jean Echenoz's novel Lightning rested close to my mind's eye as I crept through HHhH. Much as Echenoz created an almost strophic life of Tesla which still hummed like one of the Serb's coils, Binet addresses the assassination of Heydrich in Prague during the Second World War. Binet begins his account with a constant rapping of the fourth wall and an incessant imploring of his disgust with description in novels, apparently Binet also loathes historical fiction; why shove dramatic words into real people, he muses? No, the author coy follows such discipline and then lapses poetic: what follows is Binet revealing, retreating, reframing.

    It is difficult to explain, but many books serve as platforms to settle scores. This is one of them. Early in the book The Kindly Ones is taken to ask for its gory glorification and the installation of a 21st Century nihilist perspective into the SS. Unexpectedly, Binet finds the voice of History itslf in Bill Vollmann's Europe Central.

    Still, for someone so righteous about facts, i find it odd that he mentions the postwar life of Simone Weil, as well as the fact she survived Aushwitz. Maybe there are other Simone Weils?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What is the obsession with Reinhard Heydrich? I suppose it must be that Himmler’s right hand man in the SS was the highest ranking Nazi to be assassinated during WWII. An architect of the Holocaust, force behind the Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads, and Deputy Reich Protector of the largely Czech Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Arguably the intended successor to Adolf Hitler. WWII alternate history aficionados ever since find it convenient to thwart his assassination, establishing for him a prominent role in a new timeline. Witness Amazon’s production of The Man in the High Castle or Robert Harris’ Fatherland for two recent examples.This book is hard to characterize, and in the hands of a lesser author, would have been a mess. It is part biography of Heydrich, part thriller as we follow the heroes Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš as they parachute toward destiny and near-certain death in Nazi-controlled Prague. But in Binet’s hands, HHhH (acronym from the German meaning “Himmler's brain is called Heydrich”), is also meta-historical meditation on writing history, personal memoir of Binet himself, travelogue as the author researches his book: in other words, this book has a unique structure and an idiosyncratic plan, and I am happy to say that he pulls it off gloriously.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Reinhard Heydrich..."the most dangerous man in the Third Reich, the Hangman of Prague, the Butcher, the Blond Beast, the Goat"....has an unenviable reputation of being one of the most vicious and ruthless Nazi thugs during the second world war. As well as being a master swordsman, an accomplished violinist, he was equally up to the task of murder, genocide and the removal of any human being that did not conform to the Aryan idea of the master race.HHhH by Lauren Binet creates a fictional account, from the known facts, of the events leading up to and including the death of Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich in Prague on June 4th 1942. It is an unusual book written in a very readable style and as an introduction to the world of this ruthless man makes a worthwhile contribution. I particularly enjoyed (if this is the correct term) the tension and the build up to the to the assassination by two specially trained agents, Jozek Gabcik and Jan Kubis. The aftermath and reprisals of the Nazis was a heartless and cowardly way to break the will of the Czech populace reminding them of their need for subservience to the mighty German overlord.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is based on the true events of the assassination attempt of Reinhard Heydrich an Nazi secret service chief.Heydrich is in charge of the Czech Republic in operations in 1942.The RAF train two men Jozef Gabcik a Slovakian and Jan Kubis a Czech to parachute into Prague and kill Heydrich.As the war intensifies the crimes the Nazis commit get worse and worse.There are lots of spies and double agents.Gabcik and Kubis seize their chance but it doesn't go according all go according to plan, Heydrich does die in hospital though. The Nazis are out for revenge and wipe out entire towns and villages. Gabcik and Kubis and some comrades escape hide in a church one of their so called friends grasses them up to the Nazis and there is a big shoot out. This book is written in a funny way, the writer tells the story and explains his research along the way it is well written and researched.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a "non-fiction novel" in a similar sort of style to those of Javier Cercas, i.e. it combines a relatively objective investigation of a particular set of historical events - in this case the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in May 1942 - with a very subjective account of the process of researching and writing about those events. Binet tells us about how he came to be interested in Czech and Slovak history and to love Prague above all other cities (he did his French military service as a teacher in Slovakia and later had a Czech girlfriend), how he learnt about the assassination and its consequences, how he reacted to the sources came across as he was researching it, and so on. And of course that leads into discussion of wider issues - about the Nazis and their impact on European history and on our perceptions of how history works, about Heydrich's role in developing and implementing the "Final solution", about the value of resistance to overwhelming force, and about the complicated relationship between history, narrative, and historical fiction.Sometimes Binet's niggling about the verifiability of the past takes on a comic dimension: early in the book he notes that he's told us that Heydrich grew up in "Halle", without realising that there are several towns of that name in Germany and he has no idea which one it was (it turns out to have been Halle-an-der-Saale). There's also a long-running niggle about the colour of Heydrich's car - Binet remembers the Mercedes he saw in a Prague museum as being black, and his girlfriend-of-the-time confirms that, but other writers talk about a green car, and photographs from the time are of course black-and-white. Perhaps it would be possible to settle this doubt somehow (maybe there's still a copy of the order for the car in an archive somewhere), but of course it's not that important - it doesn't materially affect the course of the attack on Heydrich, but it troubles his conscience as a writer that he may be giving us false information, and of course this serves as a symbol of all the thousands of other points of detail that a historian cannot know but a historical novelist would have to supply. Binet generally follows the convention of pretending that his writing of the book is happening in parallel with our reading, so that if he finds out something new he should have told us about earlier, he doesn't go back and change the earlier chapter, but rather discusses his doubts with us.It's an interesting exercise, but I think Binet takes on a bit too much. Compared to all the other people who've already written about Wannsee and Theresienstadt and Babi Yar, he can't help coming over as a bit of a lightweight. Cercas has been doing this rather longer, and seems to have a bit more control of where his mind rambles off to in the course of telling the story. But Binet does give us a very compelling account of the assassination itself and of the German operation to track down the attackers, both of which seem to have been beset with accidental difficulties and silly mistakes. It's tempting to say "HMmM..."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An important story that needs to be told: you can feel this impulse tantalizing Laurent Binet on every page. But this novel-cum-history book is in turns fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. For example, the chapters are sometimes so short (three lines!) and the narrative hard to distinguish between telling a story and telling the story. But its relentless pace and tragic denouement drive it along. I devoured the last 100 pages in record time. This is an important work in so many ways. It's groundbreaking historical fiction, especially relevant to today's polarized world, where extremism is rearing it's ugly head. Kudos to Laurent Binet for retelling the tale, and in such an innovative way.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A strange one: a mishmash of a writer [from one of the countries the assassins are from] in the process of writing a novel about Reinhard Heydrich, "Butcher of Prague" and author of the "Final Solution", and his assassination on the streets of Prague. stream-of-consciousness where the author reveals his thinking about every tiny detail: Was the car black or dark green? I have only a photo so I can't tell; Did such-and-such really happen or was it made up? Plus, there's background on Heydrich, his rise to power, planning of the assassins, carrying out of the mission--everything went wrong that could--and the denouement. I felt the book just regurgitated sometimes boring details until the last 100 pages or so, where the assassination happened and what followed. That part left me breathless; the whole affair would make a good Hollywood movie in the hands of the right people.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    'It's as if a Dr. Frankenstein novelist had mixed up the greatest monsters of literature to create a new and terrifying creature. Except that Heydrich is not a paper monster.'I was fascinated to read this book, having being a student of German history for several years. Sometimes a novel sits on your shelf and you're really not quite sure what it is going to be like when you open the cover and being to read. HHhH was such a book for me, because it tells a true story, contains real characters, and depicts actual historical events. Yet it is a novel. What will this reading experience be like, I wondered? The answer, for me, was fascinating, compelling and surprising. HHhH tells the amazing true story of 'Operation Anthropoid', when two heroic parachutists, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, one Czech and one Slovak, left Britain for Prague, with the task of assassinating Reinhard Heydrich, the then 'Protector of Bohemia and Moravia', senior figure in the Nazi party, and 'principal architect' of the Final Solution, creator of the terrible, murderous Einzatzgruppen, he is the 'Hangman of Prague, whom the Czechs also nicknamed the Butcher,' 'the most dangerous man in the Third Reich.'The title, HHhH, stands for 'Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich' in German: in English, this is translated as Himmler's brain is called Heydrich, because 'in the devilish duo he forms with Himmler, he is thought to he the brains.' Binet builds the story slowly towards the main event, and along the way he finds evidence of Heydrich's dark deeds and involvement almost everywhere: 'it's incredible. Almost anywhere you look in the politics of the Third Reich, and particularly among its most terrifying aspects, Heydrich is there - at the center of everything.'What makes this book even more interesting than being just an engrossing, present tense retelling of this thrilling episode in history, and of events leading up to it, is that the author speaks directly to the reader throughout. He breaks into the narrative and tells us where he has hesitated, where he thinks he might have made a mistake, or is unsure about an event; 'I've been talking rubbish, the victim of both a faulty memory and an overactive imagination.' And, at another point, he tells us; 'that scene, like the one before it, is perfectly believable and totally made up.' He has described this himself as the reader receiving the equivalent of 'the movie, and the making of the movie', all at once. This conversational tone, and the honesty, made me smile at times. He also discusses previous literature on this event, and films that have portrayed Heydrich. This book made a real impact on me. It is fascinating from a historical perspective, in particular with regard to Czechoslovakia then, and there were many things I learned and people I now know about, like Beneš, and Colonel Moravec, the heroic Gabčík and Kubiš, and other heroes of the Czechoslovakian resistance like them. As Binet so eloquently writes, 'how many forgotten heroes sleep in history's great cemetery?' I didn't feel like I was reading a translation either. The style is an unusual construction, but for me it was highly effective and extremely engaging. It is a compelling, moving story. Brilliant.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is historical fiction about the assassination of Heinrich Heydrich (the main proponent for the Final Solution at the Wansee Conference). While it is a novel about Heydrich, his assassination, and his assassins, it is also a novel about writing a novel, specifically writing historical fiction. And that is the part I did not like. The constant authorial intrusions and interruptions bothered me terribly. (Or rather, perhaps, the intrusions of a fictional narrator who is writing a novel of historical fiction--in either case my complaint is the same). This may be merely a personal preference of mine, as I've had this same reaction to at least one other book like this. (However, in August I read The Lost City of Z, in which the author inserts into the history of the Amazonian explorations of Percy Fawcett his own adventures in researching the story and ultimately following in Fawcett's footsteps, and I found that in The Lost City of Z, the authorial intrusions worked perfectly--the book would not have been as good without them.)I can objectively see that this is a very clever book, and perhaps a good novel in the metafictional sense. Binet calls the book an "infra-novel" in which the creative artist's struggle comes to the foreground. However, to give you a sense of how it grated on me, I can do no better than quote the following excerpt from an Amazon review: "Imagine, if you will, picking up Tolstoy's War and Peace, and being confronted with passages like, 'And so Napoleon decided to invade Russia. Or at least that's what I think he decided. I wasn't there, so I can't exactly read his mind. All I can do is tell you that he did invade Russia, which is the story I'm going to write about. But it's hard to concentrate on that story just now because I'm equally fascinated with the lovely, blonde, 20 year old stenographer I just hired, and she's a tremendous distraction."2 stars
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Whilst part of the way through reading HHhH, my husband enquired what the point of the book was. After thinking hard for a moment I struggled to give him a clear answer. Is it the story of a writer's experience of writing an historical novel? Is it an historical factual account, or a fictional account of a historical event? Is it an alternative account of the Third Reich during WWII, told from the specific viewpoint of the Czechs? Is it a biography of the rise and fall of Heydrich, the Blonde Beast, Hangman of Europe, Butcher of Prague? Is it a critique of the traditional techniques employed in writing historical texts? Is it simply a thrilling spy novel? Now that I've finished the book, I would say that it's all these things and more. This book is nothing short of a total game changer, turning literary history completely on its head and creating a new genre of its own.It's brave, it's audacious (Binet has no fear in head-on negatively critiquing his successful literary predecessors), it's thrilling, it's unique, it's page-turning, and above all its eminently readable.HHhH is written in the story within a story format, with Binet narrating his struggles to do justice to the story of an assassination attempt on Reinhard Heidrich by a Czech and Slovak parachuted in from London. So many story lines are interwoven within the narrative - the accession of Heidrich through the ranks of the Third Reich, the lead up to the Final Solution, the political divisions within Czechoslovakia, the Czech Resistance movement, the increasing expansion of the Third Reich within Europe, and Binet's analysis of the right and wrong ways to write a book about a key historical event.This story could have ended up like so many other non-fiction history books - either jam-packed full of endless detail that becomes tedious and impossible to remember, or else with facts sacrificed where it suits to create a more thrilling fictional account. Binet eyeballs both alternatives and decides to create a third option instead; he increases the tension with fictionalised firsthand detail on occasion, but then immediately admits to the reader where he's 'padded', and he also bins most of the factual detail that's irrelevant to his ultimate storyline, however tempting it may be to cram in all those facts he's meticulously researched.It all sounds a bit barmy - and it is - but it's a format that totally works. He includes just the right amount of detail and literary brilliance to put you right there as a fly on the wall of every scene. I was gripped from the first page to the last, and every part of my brain feels like it's had a workout. I'm now informed about part of WWII that I didn't know much about previously, I'm emotionally exhausted from feeling like I was standing on the sidelines of a James Bond-esque mission of heroic daring, and I can't stop thinking about how it's still possible for someone to take such a hugely new approach to writing. The whole time I was reading this amazing book I kept thinking "THIS is how we should be teaching history to our children". I am consistently frustrated by my inability to remember historical facts, yet Binet's writing style is so enveloping I feel confident there are many facts from this corner of history that are now indelibly imprinted in my mind. Binet is the cool, funky, history teacher you never had - but you have now.5 stars (which astounds me - I don't even really like historical or thriller genres)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich is one of the great heroic tales of our time. Two Czech freedom-fighters took on what they understood to be a suicide mission to take down the "Butcher of Prague," one of the prime authors of the Final Solution.

    I've known the story for years. In picking up Laurent Binet's "HHhH," the question I had was, "Can it really be retold in a different, invigorating way?" The answer is yes.

    Binet's approach is unique. On the cover, the book is called "A Novel." It reads more to me like a book-length personal essay (Binet himself calls it an "infranovel.") What Binet does is write a book about his writing a book about Heydrich and his demise. If that sounds off-putting, I felt a little that way myself as I began reading it. But in the course of things, the power of the story itself takes hold, and the Binet's story and the Heydrich story merge in compelling ways.

    When it comes to the assassination itself--as well as its immediate aftermath--even though I know the details, I was riveted by Binet's retelling. At this point I couldn't put the book down, and was profoundly moved. By the last word of the last page, I felt myself merged into the story myself and knew I had been through an experience.

    (I think the book will be enjoyed much more by those like me who already know the Heydrich story, as opposed to those who don't.)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A tale of World War II Prague, I figured it was my kind of thing. Even with jacket blurbs by Easton Ellis, Amis, McCann, Lodge and Shteyngart (among others) I found it to be just OK. I enjoyed it more as it progressed but, in the end, wasn't blown away by it - as it were.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    To get away with constant metafictional intrusions and backtracks and historigraphical excursions and surprisethatdidntreallyhappens and thatdetailringsfalselemmejustgetthatforyas like Binet does, you have to be not only smart (of course), but either really really funny or really really sincere. And since this is a book about Nazis, that pretty much leaves only the latter. Binet manages both--tells the parallel stories of Gabčik and Kubiš and of Heydrich, aka the Blond Beast, aka to his little fucking German classmates "Süss the Jew" because there's no loathing like self-loathing (he was not, in fact, Jewish, but well, clearly Heydrich is gonna have a head full of burn-the-world-down about it, you know?) with appropriate hero worship (but thoughtful) and appalled (but still thoughtful) execration, respectively--the healthy horror of the healthy mind in a healthy body who hits the gym and has a couple glasses of wine a night and has regrets about his lost Slovak love but not like cut-your-wrists regrets. you know? Binet is very clever and very well adjusted and just seems like a nice guy, and that's the only reason we tolerate all the dicking around he does of us. I mean, I do; I see others quibble. I like nice guys.Anyway, there is an obsessive but not so much that it's aesthetically displeasing, let us say "painterly," level of detail about the target and the leadup and most of it seems actually actual, and really if this is the kind of book you're reading to learn about Heydrich you don't care if you get a few salient details wrong, or I guess I mean if a few of the wrong details strike you as salient. You know? I'm not gonna read Group Captain Archibald Baldarchison's The Guns They Carried. I thought interesting thoughts about how weird-quixotic it is that we try to "get inside" history, but what a piece of shit history would be if we couldn't, and the moments leading up to the assassination and the aftermath (Lidice is slighted, in a way, but it's a story that almost asks to be slighted. Everyone died. No, no reason. To spend too long learning about all their lives and loves so you can feel maudlin and not just sick about it almost lets their SS murderers off the hook). The time-stands-still stuff, the how-did-i-get-here-this-is-not-my-beautiful-wife only it really isn't it's actually you just tried to kill Heydrich and your piece of shit Sten gun jammed and now you're looking at him and he's looking at you and a bird is shitting on his towncar and the kid on the other side of the tram just let go of his balloon and this is your life--that stuff was deeply skilled, a flight of literary artistry that Binet spent the whole book working himself up for. He's not a genius but I bet if you met him you'd think wow this guy is good at everything and he's totally going home with the really pretty tall girl, isn't he. Gabčik and Kubiš have a bit of that to them too, maybe why Binet likes them. They shook the thrones of the mighty. Their last stand was brave. Doing a little 200-page writeup to remind people of that and also what slavering monsters actually took over a whole huge European country seems like a reasonable thing to do.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This might be a very good work if it weren't for Binet's constant intrusion of himself into his own novel. It gets to the point where he even subjects his readers to his own literary opinions--for instance attacking Jonathan Littel's The kindly ones and even taking a swipe at Michel Houellebecq. Basically his novel could have been edited down another 50 pages and been a lot better for it. Personally I like a lot about it but the author who is a literature professor is pretty much treating his readers like they were just another one of his classes. It struck me as a bit assholish. Not sure I'm going to give him another chance.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A special book.A book about a story to be told. A real life story, the killing of Heydrich in World War II by the resistance.But more then that, a book about the writer of the book, written by himself.His emotions, his sympathy or not, his view, his showing off with how many other authors he knows, he disapproves, ....But intriguing, compelling, sucking you in .... In this to be told story, in this story that everyone should read.So that we should know that heroes exist, not th'e two gunmen, but ordinary civilians risking their lives for.... For what? For freedom? Ouch.... Too high. For their country? Ouch ... Way too far. For friendship maybe, or for what they believe deep in themselves is right or wrong!As i said, ordinary people. But certainly heroes!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5


    Maybe 3.5. I can see the point of using casual narration to offset the intensity of the story, but at times I felt it went too far and bordered on sloppiness / laziness, e.g. "I haven't had time to investigate more deeply." "I would love to know the contents of that letter. I should have copied it down in Czech when I had the chance." This is a shame because I think the author was comprehensive in his research. I just wish he hadn't weakened his message by revealing so much of what he didn't do.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Really really enjoyed this book. Easy to read, exciting, different. I loved how the author discussed his own journey to discovery and his qualms about writing the book. I had never heard of the assassination attempt on Heydrich previously so I also learnt a lot
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Awkward title aside, this was fairly brilliant. Binet is a French author, and in his own words HHhH is an infranovel. It is a dual narrative, with the author as narrator in the present, as well as, simultaneously, an account of Operation Anthropoid, the attempt to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich – Himmler’s right hand man, architect of the Final Solution, and brutal Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia known as “The Butcher of Prague.” The narrative taking place in the present is that of the author, of his struggles with his story, with only a few interesting droplets about his life. The author's narrative makes this novel into something more than "just" a novel about Heydrich's assassination. It becomes a postmodern treatise on the novel -- even while, somehow, critiquing the nihilism of postmodernism -- and a discussion on truth. To be fair, the historical narrative is also more than the story of Heydrich's death. It is the story of his life and the lives of those who killed him. It is the context of all these lives: central European history, the Great War, the rise of National Socialism, anti-semitism, the betrayal of the Munich Agreement, Prague. At times, Binet's scope is incredibly broad, but perhaps because of the author's narrative, HHhH feels very intimate. The author's narrative serves to remind the reader why, for example, we are reading about medieval German settlement in Bohemia or other such interesting but seemingly unrelated stories. Beyond these reminders, the author allows the reader to see into his mind, his obsession with Operation Anthropoid, to experience his doubts, his concerns about what to include and not to include, and, in a more limited sense, the effects of writing and obsession on loved ones. While the author’s narrative is not the traditional account of his own life so common to dual narratives, it is certainly the account of the life this novel.HHhH is thought provoking on many levels: the philosophical issues of crafting the novel, of story telling, of truth, of what motivates men to brutality and hate and bravery and betrayal. The struggle in HHhH is not really about whether the two Czechoslovak heroes will successfully assassinate Heydrich; that story is, if not well-known today, easily checked. HHhH is also the struggle of the author to not lose himself in the often self-centered questions of his own life, at the expense of those whose lives he is recounting. Just like our heroes, the author is successful. We still hear the historical narrative, loud and clear, in all its harshness and brutality. For Heydrich was a brutal man; his reign as "protector" of Bohemia and Moravia was marked by extreme cruelty and violence, as were the reactions of the Nazi regime on the Czech people after his assassination. This makes HHhH, at times, difficult to read. But Binet also recounts stunning, shining, astonishing examples of bravery – the sort that make you wonder, what if it were me? – that counteract the darkness of Nazism. The heroes of Operation Anthropoid paid for their success with their lives; the reader is left wondering what his authorial success cost our narrator.