Laurent Binet: HHhH (2010) 📚

In May 1942, the high-ranking Nazi officer Reinhard Heydrich, nicknamed “The Butcher of Prague”, was attacked in Prague by Czechoslovak resistance agents in an assassination operation called Anthropoid. The author describes how he became obsessed with this event, reading everything that could be even tangentially related to anything or anyone who had even the faintest connection to it — eventually leading him to write this book. The book, HHhH, is not your typical historical novel, let alone a typical piece of historical fiction. It’s as much a study of the author’s relationship with historical writing as it is a recounting of the events. Binet makes it very clear that he will not invent characters, their thoughts, dialogue, or motives if he does not have any evidence for them. The chapters are short (the shortest one is just one line!) and a chapter that describes the historical events is often followed by the author’s commentary, like musings about missing or contradictory sources,…