An American novelist scandalizes France

So what's the really big whoop? "Les Bienveillantes" is clunkily written -- it often feels as if Littell is just regurgitating the enormous amount of research he obviously did -- and paradoxically uninvolving, considering its topic. Narrator Max Aue, a Francophile SS with a law degree and a taste for Rameau, finds himself, Zelig-like, present at various key times and places of WWII: He hangs out with French right-wing ideologues Lucien Rebatet and Robert Brasillach in Paris; witnesses the mass extermination of Jews in Ukraine; gets wounded in Stalingrad; returns to Berlin, where he organizes the use of prisoners to sustain the war effort; goes off to inspect concentration camps; somehow ends up in Hitler's bunker.

Through it all, Aue somatizes (he vomits constantly and is often victim of diarrhea), reminisces longingly and achingly about his relationship with his twin sister, indulges in aesthetic ruminations on music and literature, gets sodomized by rough trade and junior officers, and ponders the difference between rational and irrational anti-Semitism.

For instance, take the literary prizes -- Littell sure did. As soon as the initial excitment had started to calm down, the finalists for the fall prizes were announced and all hell broke loose again. Now, France loves literary prizes: The comprehensive Web site Prix-litteraires.net lists 982 of them -- not bad for a country of 64 million people. Out of those 982, however, emerge biggies with direct influence on sales (Prix Goncourt, Prix Renaudot, Prix Femina, Prix Interallié, Prix Académie Française, Prix Médicis). In an unprecedented coup, "Les Bienveillantes" was long-listed by all six; it ended up winning both the Académie Française and the Goncourt, only the second twofer in the prizes' history.

It's obvious that the foremost reason "Les Bienveillantes" has attracted such passionate interest is its basic premise: The story is told by an unrepentant SS officer. It certainly helped Littell's credibility that he had firsthand experience of the cruelty men are capable of, having traveled to the likes of Bosnia, Afghanistan and Chechnya when he worked for Action Against Hunger, but that still didn't prevent many from reacting viscerally and violently to his choice of a first-person narration. In protest, a member of the Prix Goncourt jury symbolically voted for Elie Wiesel, who wasn't nominated. Best-selling author Christine Angot, whose "fiction" is transparently autobiographical, trashed Littell's book in the glossy gay monthly Tetu, arguing that as a Jew, Littell couldn't possibly write from a Nazi's perspective (she didn't seem to have a problem with a law-abiding man writing about killing, or with a married father writing about gay sex).