Prize-winning novels from France

The Prix Goncourt was awarded, as of right, to Jonathan Littell for Les Bienveillantes (Galli- mard). Les Bienveillantes, the Kindly Ones, is the name usually given to the Furies. The narrator of this masterly novel, Max Aue, the director of a lace factory, is writing his account of the second world war, in which he served on the wrong, i.e. German side. Notable for his sane and reasonable tone of voice the narrator divulges, without much compunction, that he is a former Nazi, an SS officer who was present in all the main theatres of war, initially in Lithuania and the Ukraine, and latterly in a devastated Berlin.

He is also notable for his imperturbable sense of right and wrong, or rather his conviction that these terms are implausible. The gas chambers? On whom do we lay the blame? On the guard who releases the gas or the railwayman who switches the points so that the train travels in one direction rather than another? In the end no one is responsible. Thus Nazi Germany presents as a case of mass psychosis in which everyone was, or thought himself to be, innocent of wrongdoing.

This opinion, or delusion, is conveyed to the reader through 900 pages of close print, supplemented by a sizeable glossary of acronyms and abbreviations. The narrator, on leave as it were from his doctoral thesis, advances the theory that in similar circumstances all would behave in the same way. The novel is diabolically (and I use the word advisedly) clever. It is also impressive, not merely as an act of impersonation but perhaps above all for the fiendish diligence with which it is carried out.