A controversial novel about a fictionalised figure, a family man and factory owner in post-war France who was a former SS officer and active participant in Nazi atrocities looking back on his life with a dispassionate eye. 'An extraordinarily powerful novel that leads the stunned reader on a journey through some of the darkest recesses of European history' "Observer"

Jonathan Littell was born in 1967 in New York of American parents and brought up and educated mainly in France. This novel, originally published in France as Les Bienveillantes, became a bestseller and won the coveted Prix Goncourt and the Académie Française's Prix de Littérature. Previously he worked for the humanitarian agency, Action contre la faim, in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He now lives in Spain.