In writing about this car, Binet may describe it as black as Heydrich and his driver travel to and from his headquarters at a magnificent castle in Prague. Here, he mentions, say, Heydrich’s Mercedes Benz convertible, which two resistance fighters, trained by the Brits, surveilled and successfully ambushed. In the movie “Conspiracy”, BTW, Kenneth Branagh plays Heydrich as a strangely charming bureaucrat and psychopath as he chairs this conference.Īround Heydrich’s macabre story and vile career, Binet builds a strange and slightly goofy metafiction. There, he, Eichmann, Muller, and other notorious Nazis discussed the implementation of Goring’s policy paper, “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question”. In HHhH, Laurent Binet touches on the highlights of Heydrich’s notorious career, such as planning Kristallnacht and organizing the Einsatzgruppen, which were special troops that, according to Wikipedia, “.travelled in the wake of German armies and murdered over two million people, including 1.3 million Jews, by mass shooting and gassing.” Heydrich also chaired the infamous Wannsee Conference in January 1942.

As a historical novel, HHhH explores the rise and assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a brutal Nazi who was a favorite of Hitler and Himmler’s go-to guy in the SS and Gestapo. HHhH is both a historical novel and a metafiction. HHhH is one of The New York Times' Notable Books of 2012. A seemingly effortlessly blend of historical truth, personal memory, and Laurent Binet's remarkable imagination, HHhH―an international bestseller and winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman―is a work at once thrilling and intellectually engrossing, a fast-paced novel of the Second World War that is also a profound meditation on the nature of writing and the debt we owe to history. Who were these men, arguably two of the most discreet heroes of the twentieth century? In Laurent Binet's captivating debut novel, we follow Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubiš from their dramatic escape of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to England from their recruitment to their harrowing parachute drop into a war zone, from their stealth attack on Heydrich's car to their own brutal death in the basement of a Prague church. With his cold Aryan features and implacable cruelty, Heydrich seemed indestructible―until two men, a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service, killed him in broad daylight on a bustling street in Prague, and thus changed the course of History. The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the 'Butcher of Prague.' He was feared by all and loathed by most. HHhH: 'Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich', or 'Himmler's brain is called Heydrich'.

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