Les Bienveillantes

In fact, I could just as well have not written. After all, this is not an obligation. Since the war, I have remained a discreet man; thanks to God, I have never felt the need, like some of my former colleagues, to write my memoirs to justify myself, because I have nothing to justify, nor for a lucrative purpose, because I live my life as it is. I regret nothing: I've done my work, that's all; as for my family stories, which I'll probably tell you too, they only concern me. As for the rest, towards the end, I certainly pushed the limits, but then I was no longer really myself; I was empty, the whole world was shaking, and I was not the only one to lose my head, remember. Despite my experiences, and they have been many, I am still one of those who think that the only things essential to human life are air, eating, drinking, and the search for truth. The rest is optional. With this work, which is inscribed under the aegis of Aeschylus as well as in the lineage of Life and Fate by Vassili Grossman or The Damned by Visconti, Jonathan Littell makes us relive the horrors of World War II from the perspective of the perpetrators, while showing us a man as rarely depicted: the epiphany of a being caught in the traversal of himself and of history.