Laurent Binet's HHhH: A Review

 

Laurent Binet, HHhH (London: Vintage, 2012). [unpaged] Translated from the French by Sam Taylor.

Reinhard Heydrich, who could have been strategically nurtured to become Hitler’s successor, was killed after an attack on his car in Prague in 1942. His nickname among the Czech people was ‘the Butcher of Prague’. It would seem obvious he had few friends among them. Was his assassination an event that entirely changed the course of WWII and therefore History? Perhaps it was.

Heydrich. (Photograph by Heinrich Hoffmann - Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

Speculating with what might have been seems pointless, does it not? Still, many believe the perpetrators of the attack should be praised for ridding the world of such a cruel, evil person. And I would tend to wholeheartedly agree. After all, he was one of the brains behind the so-called Final Solution. The fateful day in the streets of Prague is the subject of Laurent Binet’s novel, which won him a big literary prize in France, the Goncourt.

Binet, however, does not want to write a historical novel. Obviously, he does not want to write history either. He’s no historian. He thinks that the invention of facts or characters in a novel about a true event is nothing short of a crime: fabricating evidence, more or less. I bet he dislikes books such as Wolf Hall or Bring up the Bodies so much that he would refuse to read them point blank! Oh well: his loss.

Being such an astonishing story of bravery and self-sacrifice, the plot (i.e., the conspiracy to kill the monstrous Heydrich) should be narrated with tantalizing detail. Except that Binet does not have any verifiable new data he could use with absolute certainty. His struggle is with the limitations of the novel as a genre. HHhH, Binet decides, has to tell a story-within-a-story: the author’s obsession with how to approach and tell a story about true events for which verified information is scant or non-existent. Moreover, instead of numbering the pages, the publisher numbers the parts (you can hardly call them chapters, can you?).

The Mercedes (possibly this very car, but who knows? And who cares?). Photograph by FunkMonk (Michael B. H.) 

The heroes’ names were Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. They were trained in England and parachuted over Czech land. The resistance helped them prepare the assassination, which funnily enough almost failed at the last moment: Gabčík’s gun got stuck and stopped working, and therefore plan B was quickly activated. It was Kubiš who threw a hand grenade into Heydrich’s Mercedes. The infections caused by the wounds killed Heydrich about a week later. Mission accomplished?

Yes, but the Nazi retaliation was brutal, as could have been predicted. Lidice, a village near Prague, was completely destroyed. Their inhabitants were either murdered or sent to a concentration camp, where most of them eventually died. The Czech heroes hid, together with five other members of the resistance, in a Prague church. Betrayed by one of their own, they were found and attacked. They lasted many hours and drove the German soldiers and their commanders spare. None of them were captured alive.

The Lidice Memorial reminds us all of what kind of bestiality the Nazis were capable of.

The biggest objection I have in regard to this book is Binet’s obsession with his own obsessiveness. It constantly gets in the way of the story itself. That may be fanciful and fun to begin with, yes. But Binet overuses the device. His authorial presence is more than an attendance: it can become a burden! I did not think this book is as accomplished as The 7^th Function of Language, but I’m looking forward to reading his new publication, Civilizations.

Hoping to read you soon again, Laurent. Photograph by G. Garitan.