Binet digs into Heydrich’s history, trying to understand what lead him to become the man known as the Butcher of Prague, the Hangman of Prague, the Blond Beast, and - Hitler’s nickname for him - The Man with the Iron Heart. He was held up as an example of the Aryan ideal: tall, blonde, quite clever, and very, very cruel.
Sadly, it’s impossible to tell the story of heroes without spending time with the villain - and Binet paints a vivid picture of Heydrich. In 1942, they were assigned to parachute into Czechoslovakia, make their way to Prague, and bring a well-deserved reckoning to Reinhard Heydrich. The story is meant to honor two heroes of Czechoslovakia: Jozef Gabčik, a Slovak factory worker, and Jan Kubiš, a Czech soldier. As the first-person narrator says early in the book: ‘Inventing a character in order to understand historical facts is like fabricating evidence.’ The events and the characters in this novel are all true to life. His other novels include The Seventh Function of Language and Civilizations.We could summarize this book by saying, ‘This is historical fiction about the assassination of the Nazi Reinhard Heidrich in Prague during WWII.’ But that doesn’t come anywhere close to describing what’s it’s really about. He is a professor at the University of Paris III, where he lectures on French literature. 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.
About the Author: Laurent Binet was born in Paris, France, in 1972. A seamless blend of memory, actuality, and Binet's own remarkable imagination, HHhH is at once thrilling and intellectually engrossing-a fast-paced novel of the Second World War that is also a profound meditation on the debt we owe to history. In Laurent Binet's mesmerizing debut, we follow Jozef Gabcík and Jan Kubis from their dramatic escape from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to their fatal attack on Heydrich and their own brutal deaths in the basement of a Prague church. The most lethal man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich seemed indestructible-until two exiled operatives, a Slovak and a Czech, killed him and changed the course of history.
It's one of the best historical novels I've ever come across.-Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho and Less Than Zero A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for FictionĪ New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice HHhH: Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich, or Himmler's brain is called Heydrich.
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