The Kindly Ones

“The Mercy Men” is a historical novel by a French writer of American origin, told 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 story unfolds on the Eastern Front (Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Stalingrad), in Poland, Germany, Hungary, and France. In 2006, “The Mercy Men” won the Goncourt Prize and the Grand Prize of the French Academy, becoming a European bestseller translated into 20 languages so far. Critics noted the novel’s “absolute historical accuracy,” calling it “an outstanding literary and historical event” (Pierre Nora). The English newspaper The Times wrote of “The Mercy Men” as “a great literary event that readers and researchers will turn to for decades,” and ranked the novel among the five most significant works of fiction about World War II. The book is released in a new edition of a translation that’s described as gripping “by the throat,” getting into “the brain, into the guts,” catching on and throwing you down like an enormous wave. Long has French language not taken on such a heavy, mind-twisting burden. This book is a literary revolution—not about how it is written, but about what it is: like a ship loaded with history in all its hopelessness, bloodshed, aspirations, delusions. Long have such giants not entered our literary harbors. Georges Niva
A great literary event—one that readers and researchers will turn to for many decades. THE TIMES