The Kindly Ones

I love books. I love to read, and in this break from school I look forward to reading quite a bit. Being in university has pretty much quashed my desire to read books for pleasure because there is just SO much mandatory reading to do. That isn't to say that I haven't read a few good books in my time in university though.

Many people are shocked to know that I'm a history buff, and that I love books about war, more specifically World War II.  It's not to say that I love war, that isn't the case at all. In fact the reason I love to read about it so much, (and watch TV documentaries too!) is because I dislike it so much. There's something that fascinates me World War II specifically that I can't really put my finger on. It was so devastating, took so many lives, and turned the whole world upside down, and something about that intrigues me to no end.

At this moment in time, I'm working on a book called 'The Kindly Ones' I've been working on this book for a very long time as it's just shy of 1000 pages long, and also because it's so horrifying that I can't read it close to bed time - my favourite time to read. I think I started it last Remembrance day, and this Remembrance day kind of reminded me that I should pick it up again while I'm on this extended break from school.

'The Kindly Ones' is a fictional autobiography of a former SS officer in Nazi Germany, and it follows his encounters in several battles, as well as being part of the concentration and extermination camps and his dealings with people such as Hitler during the war. He's telling the story of his life as an SS officer, and all of the horrible things he was forced to commit during his time there. As you can imagine, this book is very, very visual and very difficult to get through without wanting to cry a little bit (or I guess I should say a lot.)

This book by Johnathan Littell was originally written in French, and won 2 of the most prestigious French literary awards in 2006. Needless to say this book is amazing, but shocking, horrifying, devastating, and every other word you can use to describe WWII. If you want to know a bit more about it, here's the Wikipedia Article. There are a lot of mixed reviews about this book, but I think that the literary awards won by this book should speak for itself. Generally, book critics aren't forced to sit down and read 1000 pages of gut wrenching war fiction, so I kind of feel like they don't get it, and therefore their ideas and reviews about this book are incredibly unreliable.

If you have the ability to read it, I would suggest you do. It gives you a whole new insight into the world. I feel like if you don't know and understand the world's history, you can't prevent it from repeating itself - if nothing else, after this book I should be able to prevent WWII from happening again. Perhaps when I finish it I'll post a real review of my own.


Blog, and be happy!

Kyleigh.