Hi everyone!
Are any of you familiar with Operation Anthropoid? No? I wasn't...and unless you're a World War Two aficionado or a scholar of 20th Century Czech history, you probably aren't either. And for this reason, French novelist Laurent Binet's curious yet ultimately rather compelling historical novel "HHhH" may be of interest to you.
I picked it up a couple months ago at the Waterstone's book store on Piccadilly in London. It was one of those Buy One Get One Half Price deals that spell trouble for hopeless bibliophiles like me. The cover is very striking -- a black-and-white photograph of an SS officer with the letters "HHhH" printed in rather dramatic block fashion across the officer's face, obscuring it completely. These same letters provide decoration both on the book's spine and the edges of its pages. The overall impression made by the packaging is harsh and rather subversive, not necessarily something I'd want to be seen reading in public...unwholesome and dirty, if you will.
The novel itself is perfectly respectable. Fascinating even. It tells the story of Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SS during World War Two and the man responsible for setting in motion the Final Solution. Heydrich reports directly to Himmler but, according to the novel, "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich", the acronym translated into German spells "HHhH"...hence the title.
There are actually three stories that weave together during the course of the novel's nearly 300 pages: the story of Heydrich's rise to power; the London-based plot to assassinate Heydrich, organized by the Czech government-in-exile and the Czechoslovakian resistance movement; and, rather obscurely, the story of the author (Binet)'s struggle to write a strictly fact-based account of an influential if not pivotal moment in World War Two history without creative embellishment. All of these combined amount to a novel that is alternately thrilling -- especially once the assassination plot and its aftermath kick in -- yet frustratingly confounding.
The novel succeeds best when the author gets out of the way and gets down to the business of telling a great wartime adventure tale. This isn't to trivialize the history of the early days of the Holocaust or the evil mind(s) responsible for sending more than six million Jews and other minorities to their deaths. It's just that Binet's attempts to analyze the psychological make-up of Heydrich and his cohorts aren't particularly engaging and don't really reveal anything we don't already know or can't readily surmise. Although I will say the depiction of the massacre at Babi Yar is chilling.
Our heroes, the Czechoslovakian parachutists Gabcik and Kubis, are suitably dashing yet rather vaguely drawn. I think part of this vagueness is due to the fact that the author seems to consciously keep the reader at a remove from the characters and the action, jumping in with annoying frequency to ruminate over the role of the narrator and whether or not he is doing his characters a disservice by relating their lives through a fictional lens. Frankly, I just didn't care about this existential debate. I wanted to know whether the assassination plot upon which the novel hinges is carried off successfully or not. And for this reason, I found the last third of the novel unputdownable. The action is fast and furious and even though you know things probably aren't going to end well for our heroes -- the author (and history of course) basically informs us of this right at the start, you keep hoping for the best.
I daresay "HHhH" could make a cracking World War Two film. All the elements are there. Pare down -- or cut altogether -- the author's existential angst, and you've got a really rather excellent historical novel that sheds light on an important event that contributed to the turning of the tide against the Germans in 1942. I found the first half of the novel a disjointed slog but somehow Binet manages to pull off a tour de force that kept me turning pages long into the night. In this regard, the novel should be considered a success...but only for the most patient and dedicated of readers.
Special commendation should also be given to Sam Taylor's excellent translation from the French.
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