Book review: HHhH

Heroes and villains in a work of earnest postmodernism

This review was originally published on my blog March 31, 2021. I’m sharing it here as part of my new project to cross-post older reviews here on Substack. The book in question, HHhH, was one of several I read while down with COVID for a week. I read it in two days. I hope you enjoy the review and that you’ll check the book out.

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HHhH is an unusual novel. The title is the first hint. An abbreviation of a German phrase purportedly current within the upper echelons of the Third Reich, HHhH stands for Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich—Himmler’s Brain is called Heydrich. The Heydrich in question is Reinhard Heydrich: disgraced naval officer; violinist, champion fencer, and connoisseur of the arts; model Aryan; object of admiration from no less than Hitler himself; head of the Gestapo, Criminal Police, and Security Service, and other powerful instruments of Nazi order; and one of the architects of the Final Solution. He is one of the most powerful and evil people who ever lived, and HHhH tells the story of his assassination by agents of the Czech resistance.

Sort of.

The author, French novelist Laurent Binet, begins with an image of one of the assassins, Slovak commando Jozef Gabčík, trying to sleep in his safehouse in Prague ahead of the assassination attempt. From there the novel backtracks, backtracks all the way to Heydrich’s family and birth, his upbringing and abortive naval career—cut short after he seduced the daughter of Admiral Raeder—and his entry into the world of Nazism and the SS. The novel tracks, in often surprising detail—crucial context, the author assures us, and he’s right—the career of Heydrich and his steady, implacable rise. From the annexation of the Sudetenland and the subsequent dismantling and takeover of Czechoslovakia and its transformation into the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, to the invasion of Russia and the deployment of the Einsatzgruppen—mobile death squads that could shoot over 30,000 Jews at a time at places like Babi Yar outside Kiev—to Heydrich’s scourging of even the mildest resistance and his hosting of the infamous Wannsee Conference, over and over again he is the right man at the right place at the right time to take advantage of new developments, of new positions, of the frequent changes in the Nazi hierarchy, and he uses his positions to advance the cause of Nazism ruthlessly. And the nicknames he garnered along the way reveal much: Himmler’s Brain, The Butcher of Prague, and, from Hitler himself, The Man With the Iron Heart.

By the midpoint of the book Binet brings us back to the assassins, the Slovak Gabčík and his Czech partner, Jan Kubiš. Having escaped Europe by circuitous routes—which Binet notes would make smashing adventure novels of their own—they find themselves training in England and assigned to Operation Anthropoid, the plot to drop into Bohemia, infiltrate Prague, and murder Heydrich.

From this point forward the novel, already compulsively readable, proves difficult to put down. It’s over 300 pages and I read it in two days. Binet deftly interweaves the stories and, even with asides, detours, admittedly unrelated information, and reflections on the craft of historical fiction (about which more below), HHhH thunders along like a freight train—or like Heydrich’s Mercedes convertible on that fatal day in 1942. We know what’s coming from the beginning, and it approaches inexorably, with mounting dread and, yes, excitement.

But here’s where the “sort of” above comes in. HHhH not only tells the story of the assassins and of Heydrich’s life but the story of the author himself: how he came to the story, how his interest grew and deepened, and, throughout, how he decided to write this story, decided he couldn’t, and decided he must regardless. The result is a very postmodern combination of historical fiction, memoir, and commentary on historical fiction and memoir.

A sample: Binet steps back at one point to comment on the title of his manuscript, the manuscript that became the novel I read and that you’re reading about now:

Whenever I talk about the book I’m writing, I say, “My book on Heydrich.” But Heydrich is not supposed to be the main character. Through all the years that I carried this story around with me in my head, I never thought of giving it any other title than Operation Anthropoid (and if that’s not the title you see on the cover, you will know that I gave in to the demands of my publisher, who didn’t like it: too SF, too Robert Ludlum, apparently).

Later, in a passage that makes up the entirety of the novel’s Chapter 205, Binet reflects that, “I think I’m beginning to understand. What I’m writing is an infranovel.”

The distance, the authorial intrusion, the holding of one’s craft at arm’s length—all these deconstructive or self-consciously “meta” effects usually irritate me. Usually. But you might have picked up as well on Binet’s utter sincerity, the quality most often lacking in postmodern fiction. Where the last few generations of literary novelists handle fiction like a bauble they are inspecting for flaws, finally judging the enterprise meaningless, Binet is grappling with the tools at hand for the best way to tell a story that needs to be told. What he wants to do, however much his world, the French literary establishment, has called the very idea of fiction into question, is pay tribute to Gabčík and Kubiš and everyone who helped them on their way and suffered for it.

In other words, to pay tribute to heroes.

That motive infuses HHhH with heart. For all its self-consciousness, postmodern literary effects, its pauses to reflect on everything from trips to museums to love affairs to actors who have played Heydrich on film, and its open admission that the author is not up to the task, HHhH is a riveting, suspenseful, uncommonly rich, and finally—in relating the sad fates of Lidice, a village incorrectly implicated in the assassination, or of the parachutists who took on Heydrich and of everyone who helped them—profoundly moving. HHhH is an excellent example of what an historical novelist, moved by the proper love of his subject, can still accomplish in the postmodern age, and I highly recommend it.

More if you’re interested

HHhH was adapted into a film called The Man With the Iron Heart, starring Jason Clarke as Heydrich and Rosamund Pike as his ardent Nazi wife Lina. I haven’t seen more than clips from it, but it looks decent. That film came out a year after Anthropoid, which focuses on Gabčík and Kubiš, played by Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan respectively, and on the plot itself, relegating Heydrich to an ominous background presence. Anthropoid is excellent, an overlooked masterpiece, and even if you don’t read HHhH you should do yourself the favor of watching Anthropoid at least once. Here’s the meticulously reconstructed assassination scene, an extraordinarily tense three minutes.

Related: I have written here before, in this blog’s early days, about the film Conspiracy, which Binet ponders over early in the novel. Conspiracy dramatizes the Wannsee Conference in real time, with Kenneth Branagh playing Heydrich. Binet: “Branagh’s portrayal of Heydrich is quite clever: he manages to combine great affability with brusque authoritarianism, which makes his character highly disturbing.” Read my examination of the film here.

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Thanks for reading!