Review of 'HhhH' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
Not my kind of book: I think that's the best way for me to describe this title. I love literature, I am interested in WW2 (including all the depressing parts) and history/historiography in general. So in that sense, this book had a lot going for me.
I get that the author purposefully plays with what is fiction in his book and what isn't - almost like Herodotos in that regard: always carefully mentioning what could have happened and what did happen. Fine: I am sure a lot of people will love it for this reason and I admit it does make for compelling reading.
I, however, found it annoying as well: it paints my view of those events because after a while, it's possible that something I read as fiction - even when it was presented to me as fiction - might get blurred in my memory with the actual …
Not my kind of book: I think that's the best way for me to describe this title. I love literature, I am interested in WW2 (including all the depressing parts) and history/historiography in general. So in that sense, this book had a lot going for me.
I get that the author purposefully plays with what is fiction in his book and what isn't - almost like Herodotos in that regard: always carefully mentioning what could have happened and what did happen. Fine: I am sure a lot of people will love it for this reason and I admit it does make for compelling reading.
I, however, found it annoying as well: it paints my view of those events because after a while, it's possible that something I read as fiction - even when it was presented to me as fiction - might get blurred in my memory with the actual events. And those, what happened to the people involved in Operation Anthropoid and of course to what happened in to Lidice, are too important, in my opinion, to get influenced that way.
I stopped reading about 150 pages in, when the author included a story about a football match between the Luftwaffe and a team of Ukrainians. Only after telling the story does Binet mention that he told us the version he thinks was most likely, before weaseling his way out by claiming that he didn't really investigate the actual events. Well: don't include it then.
