HHhH By Laurent Binet - Penguin Books Australia

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• Published: 1 February 2013
• ISBN: 9780099555643
• Imprint: Vintage
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 336
• RRP: $24.99

Categories:

• Contemporary fiction
• General & literary fiction
• Historical fiction

HHhH

• Laurent Binet

Formats & editions Paperback 1 Feb 2013 EBook 3 May 2012 Buy from… Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape View all retailers

An astonishing, unforgettable novel: a thrilling Second World War assassination plot told with rare literary brilliance.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

Two men have been enlisted to kill the head of the Gestapo. This is Operation Anthropoid, Prague, 1942: two Czechoslovakian parachutists sent on a daring mission by London to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich - chief of the Nazi secret services, 'the hangman of Prague', 'the blond beast', 'the most dangerous man in the Third Reich'. His boss is Heinrich Himmler but everyone in the SS says 'Himmler's brain is called Heydrich', which in German spells HHhH.

HHhH is a panorama of the Third Reich told through the life of one outstandingly brutal man, a story of unbearable heroism and loyalty, revenge and betrayal. It is a moving and shattering work of fiction.

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• Published: 1 February 2013
• ISBN: 9780099555643
• Imprint: Vintage
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 336
• RRP: $24.99

Categories:

• Contemporary fiction
• General & literary fiction
• Historical fiction

About the author

Laurent Binet

Laurent Binet lives and works in France. His first novel, HHhH, was an international bestseller which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt du premier roman, among other prizes.

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Praise for HHhH

[An] extraordinary true story... made still better by the way in which Laurent Binet weaves in his own exploits as researcher and detective to uncover the truth

Week

A genuine tour de force

L'Humanite

A great success ... a terrifying story ... a breathless thriller

La Provence

A master stroke

Le Figaro Magazine

A suspenseful work of absolute originality

Claude Lanzmann, director of SHOAH

Magnificent ... unsurpassable ... told with grace and elegance ... exerts a hypnotic sway over the reader ... something of a Greek tragedy and of the splendid thriller ... All the details have such persuasive force that they remain indelibly recorded in the memory of the reader

Mario Vargas Llosa

A wonderful, ambitious book, and a triumph of translation

Colum McCann

By the time I got to the last page of Binet's masterpiece, I had to close my eyes and rethink history. I'm rethinking it still

Gary Shteyngart

HHhH is a highly original piece of work, at once charming, moving, and gripping

Martin Amis

Laurent Binet has given a new dimension to the non-fiction novel by weaving his writerly anxieties about the genre into the narrative, but his story is no less compelling for that, and the climax is unforgettable

David Lodge

HHhH blew me away. Binet’s style fuses it all together: a neutral, journalistic honesty sustained with a fiction writer’s zeal and story-telling instincts. It’s one of the best historical novels I’ve ever come across.

Brett Easton Ellis

HHhH is an astonishing book—absorbing, moving, for the agony and acuity with which its author engages the problem of making literary art from unbearable historical fact.

Wells Tower

A gripping thriller and a moving testament to the heroes of the Czechoslovakian resistance. Their mission resets the path of history. Binet’s resets the path of the historical novel. He has a bright, bright future.

David Annand, Sunday Telegraph

Brilliant..

Sunday Times, Style

Thrilling.

Killian Fox, Observer

An engrossing literary experiment that still contains enough hard facts to function as a terrific yarn.

Andrzej Lukowski, Metro

Extraordinary first novel...a literary triumph...The book's final section, which recounts the assassination and subsequent manhunt in minute detail, is a masterpiece of tension, and its closing pages are extremely moving. Very few page-turners come as smart and original as this

Chris Power, The Times

Mindblowing...obsessed with the past but gleaming with radical innovation, it's urgent and new and terrifying and beautiful and pretty much the best thing that's happened in fiction for ages

Stuart Hammond, Dazed and Confused

Thrilling and engaging...Binet brilliantly builds the tension in the lead up to the assassination attempt, likewise the nerve-shredding aftermath of the incident.... Being so experimental yet so compelling as a writer is a real high-wire act, one only precious few authors have managed. Binet does it dazzlingly here, and I'm excited about what he's going to write next

Doug Johnstone, Big Issue

Binet has created something fresh and original and at times funny (no easy task given the subject matter) making a historical tale which captures the imagination and is also an important read

Francesca Brown, Stylist

Utterly compelling and ruthlessly fascinating

Laurence Mackin, Irish Times

A thrilling story that also happens to be true, by a gifted young author... Binet manages it all with beautiful lucidity and...discreet storytelling mastery

James Lasdun, Guardian

Fresh, honest and exciting

Anthony Cummins, Spectator

Historial fiction for grown-ups

Robert McCrum, Observer

Mesmeric stuff; history brought to chilling, potent life

Leyla Sanai, Independent on Sunday

A literary tour de force

Alan Riding, Scotland on Sunday

Compelling

Barry Egan, The Sunday Independent

Binet’s debut is a masterpiece of historical fiction… gripping read

Daily Telegraph

A nail-biting novel, a thorough work of history and, most successfully of all, an exercise in form: a story about the writing of a true story

Lucy Kellaway, Financial Times

A breezily charming novel, with a thrilling story that also happens to be true, by a gifted young author amusingly anguished over the question of how to tell it … In principle there's nothing not to like about Laurent Binet's acclaimed debut, and HHhH is certainly a thoroughly captivating performance

James Lasdun, Guardian

This book fully justifies the lavish praise adorning its author

Absolutely Chelsea

Binet's approach may be new, but his story-telling instincts are nicely old fashioned. Translator Sam Wood does justice to the lucid prose

Independent

Is it a novel about the Nazis? Or is it a memoir about a historian trying to write about the Nazis? Somehow, it’s both – and it’s brilliant

William Leith, Evening Standard

A triumph

Patrick Freyne, Irish Times

A must-read for people who have a real interest in the Third Reich … improbably entertaining and electrifyingly modern, a moving work

Royston Crow

With its slightly skewed perspective and the relative freshness of its approach, HHhH compels us once again to consider that this, surely, was humanity's lowest point: a war waged, not against those who thwarted Germany's territorial ambitions, but against all that was good and decent in the human soul. In so doing, it confounds those who would decry post-modernism as wilfully obscure, relativistic and lacking in conviction

Alastair Mabbott, Herald

French newcomer Laurent Binet hits the ground running in the engrossing novel within a novel

Sunday Telegraph

Dazzling... It's stunningly brilliant

Simon Shaw, Mail on Sunday

Stunning

Donal O’Donoghue, RTE Guide

Binet provides both context and impressive detail on the eventual assassination of Heydrich

Mark Perryman, Philosophy Footbal

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