The runaway favourite to win the Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize, on Monday is far from being a Gitanes-smoking, Sartre-quoting Gallic intellectual.
Jonathan Littell is a 39-year-old American former aid worker, who decided that, for his first literary novel (an early work of science fiction apparently exists) he would write in French. And why write a short book when you can write a monster one: Les Bienveillantes - The Kind Ones, a reference to the Furies of Greek mythology - runs to around 900 pages.
In addition, Littell was unafraid to tackle a minefield of a subject, the Holocaust. Les Bienveillantes are the fictional memoirs of an SS officer who looks back without regret at the crimes he committed during the second world war.
Since its release this summer, Les Bienveillantes has become a surprise success, selling 280,000 copies. Many critics have fallen head over heels for the book. The literary review Lire described the subject as "strong and ambitious" and its style as "powerful and baroque". Others have praised it as a "great fresco" told with "an extraordinary power of conviction" and its narrator as the ultimate personification of evil.
Some, however, have found the character implausible. He is a Plato-loving gay man who sleeps with his twin sister, murders his mother and meets key figures of his time. Claude Lanzmann, director of the highly-respected documentary Shoah, has said that, while he recognises the novel's research and descriptive power, he was put off by the mix of sexual perversion, metaphysical reflection and abundance of detail.
Despite the sceptics, Les Bienveillantes has achieved the feat of being shortlisted for five top literary prizes this autumn. Already, it has won the distinguished French Academy award, with the jury voting for it by an absolute majority. Although it missed out on the Femina and the Médicis, Littell is the odds-on favourite to win France's equivalent of the Booker on November 6.
With all this buzz, it's only a matter of time before Les Bienveillantes hops on the Eurostar. According to reports, publishing house Chatto&Windus has already nabbed the UK rights. Expect it in a bookshop near you soon.
- Read an extract (in French) of Les Bienveillantes here.
