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Le Benevole (2006)

by Jonathan Littell(Favorite Author)

3.98 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

8806187317 (ISBN13: 9788806187316)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Einaudi

review 1: The beginning was fascinating. The idea of what goes on in the mind of a Nazi SS officer involved in terrible atrocities.The man, a sophisticated educated intellectual loses the idea of right and wrong completely. In the middle of the book it all became a bit too much for me. Not only because I am Jewish, that was not the problem. Mainly because my knowledge of WW2 military history was not good enough to know the real historical characters and events of the book. It just got too heavy for me.But that is my failing, not the authors.
review 2: I finally finished reading this brick of a book. I must say, that this is definitely not for everyone. There are long, descriptive, stream-of-consciousness passages which seem to drag. There are descriptions of overt sexual... more fantasies and of murders. However, the breadth of experiences in the mind of an SS/SD officer during WWII demonstrates the banality and brutality of war. Due to the length, the further you go, the line between real and imagined blurs, and you as a reader begin to accept the strange and question the normal. This effect, I assume, is much like that on soldiers during and returning from war. less

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