The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell audiobook

The Kindly Ones: A Novel

By Jonathan Littell
Read by Grover Gardner

HarperAudio
39.12 Hours • Unabridged
Format : Digital Download (In Stock)
  • 1 Format: Digital Download
  • $48.99
    or 1 Credit

    ISBN: 9780061890925

“Simply astounding. . . . The Kindly Ones is unmistakably the work of a profoundly gifted writer.” — Time A literary prize-winner that has been an explosive bestseller all over the world, Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones has been called “a brilliant Holocaust novel. . . a world-class masterpiece of astonishing brutality, originality, and force,” (Michael Korda, The Daily Beast). Destined to join the pantheon of classic epics of war such as Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, The Kindly Ones offers a profound and gripping experience of the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. A former Nazi officer, Dr. Maximilien Aue has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. An intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music, he is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Eichmann, Himmler, Göring, Speer, Heydrich, Höss—even Hitler himself—play a role in Max's story. An intense and hallucinatory historical epic, The Kindly Ones is also a morally challenging read. It holds a mirror up to humanity—and the reader cannot look away.

Learn More
Membership Details
  • Only $12.99/month gets you 1 Credit/month
  • Cancel anytime
  • Hate a book? Then we do too, and we'll exchange it.
See how it works in 15 seconds

Summary

Summary

A New York Times bestseller

Winner of the 2006 Prix Goncourt

A 2009 Time Magazine Top 10 Book for Fiction

Selected for the March 2009 Indie Next List

“Simply astounding. . . . The Kindly Ones is unmistakably the work of a profoundly gifted writer.” — Time

A literary prize-winner that has been an explosive bestseller all over the world, Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones has been called “a brilliant Holocaust novel. . . a world-class masterpiece of astonishing brutality, originality, and force,” (Michael Korda, The Daily Beast). Destined to join the pantheon of classic epics of war such as Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, The Kindly Ones offers a profound and gripping experience of the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust.

A former Nazi officer, Dr. Maximilien Aue has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. An intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music, he is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Eichmann, Himmler, Göring, Speer, Heydrich, Höss—even Hitler himself—play a role in Max's story. An intense and hallucinatory historical epic, The Kindly Ones is also a morally challenging read. It holds a mirror up to humanity—and the reader cannot look away.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews

“The force and clarity with which Littell renders the physical realities of war and mass murder are simply astounding...The Kindly Ones is unmistakably the work of a profoundly gifted writer.” —Time
“The singular achievement of Littel’s novel is the way in which he brings us uncomfortably close to the thinking of people whose careers took them from police work to euthanasia, and worse...His project seems infinitely more valuable than the reflexive gesture of writing off all those millions of killers as ‘monsters’ or ‘inhuman,’ which allows us too easily to draw a line between ‘them’ and ‘us’...meticulous...weav[es] together the dreadful and the mundane in an unsettlingly persuasive way.” —New York Review of Books
“A great work of literary fiction, to which readers and scholars will turn for decades to come.” —Times (London)
“A near-masterpiece of historical fiction...Almost against our will, Aue insinuates himself as an engaging narrator. Even more impressive is the novel’s total immersion in the historical period. The narrator feels like a primary historical source, an unrepentant eyewitness...Littell brings to life the vicious bureaucratic forces that aided and abetted the past century’s greatest mass murder. In doing so, he gives voices to the devil of our own past.” —Associated Press
“An extraordinarily powerful novel…Above all, it is a sophisticated exploration of issues of morality, evil, and luck… The novel as a whole brilliantly shows how ‘ordinary men’ become killers.” —Observer (London)
“The novel is diabolically clever. It is also impressive, not merely as an act of impersonation but perhaps above all for the fiendish intelligence with which it is carried out...This tour de force, which not everyone will welcome, outclasses all other fictions and will continue to do so for some time to come. No summary can do it justice.” —Spectator (London)
“Unquestionably brilliant...Littell is a gifted writer and what he achieves…is unparalleled…The novel [is] scrupulous in its period details and…generous in its scope.”   —The Nation
“A world-class masterpiece of astonishing brutality, originality, and force.” —Daily Beast
“In the person of Dr. Max Aue, Littell has created a compelling witness to the extraordinary events that punctuated the Third Reich...Littell has assiduously researched the large events he depicts; however, it is his own creative imagination that gives substance to the narrator’s broodings on his involvement in horrific deeds. As these dark meditations probe episodes of nightmarish cruelty and tangled sexuality, they reveal much about how ordinary human weakness creates openings for diabolic evil. A nuanced translation preserves the vertiginous power that made the French original a much-acclaimed prizewinner in Europe.” —Booklist (starred review)
“An alternately fascinating and impressively researched novel...Its feverish voice is weirdly mesmerizing, the scope awesome.”  —Newark Star Ledger

Reviews

Reviews

Be the first to review this product

Author

Author Bio: Jonathan Littell

Author Bio: Jonathan Littell

Jonathan Littell was born in New York of American parents and grew up in the United States and in France. He attended the Lycée Français in New York as well as Yale University. He now lives in Barcelona.

Titles by Author

Details

Details

Available Formats : Digital Download
Runtime: 39.12
Audience: Adult
Language: English

We love books, and we believe that you should be able to enjoy your favorite book whenever, wherever, or whatever you are doing. Audiobooks allow that freedom.

©2025 Urban Audio Books . All rights reserved. Privacy Terms of Use Purchase Terms Cookie Policy ©2025 Urban Audio Books . All rights reserved.