A historical novel by a French writer of American origin, written from the perspective of the protagonist—SS officer Maximilian Aue, one of the rank-and-file executors of the Nazi program “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” The action unfolds on the Eastern Front (Ukraine, North Caucasus, Stalingrad), in Poland, Germany, Hungary, and France. In 2006, “The Kindly Ones” received the Goncourt Prize and the Grand Prize of the French Academy; the book became a European bestseller, translated to date into 20 languages. Critics noted the novel’s “absolute historical accuracy,” calling it “an outstanding literary and historical phenomenon” (Pierre Nora). The English newspaper The Times wrote about “The Kindly Ones” as “a great literary event that readers and researchers will turn to for decades,” and placed the novel among the five most significant works of fiction about the Second World War.