This secret mission is codenamed Operation Anthropoid. Heydrich is Heinrich Himmler’s right-hand man and everyone in the SS says that “Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich” which in German ends up as the acronym HHhH ( Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich).

He was also to be the main architect of the Holocaust, and the mind behind the Final Solution. “the hangman of Prague”, “the Blond Beast” and “the most dangerous man in the Third Reich”. That man is Reinhard Heydrich, head of Gestapo, the Acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia A.K.A. In 1942, two parachutists – the Czech Jan Kubiš and the Slovak Jozef Gabcík – are enlisted to carry out a secret mission: to assassinate one of the most important Nazi officials during WWII. I heard about this book for the first time via this article on NPR but it seems this book has been talked about a lot in France since it was published (and where it won the prestigious Prix Goncourt for a first novel).

Why did I read this book: I have a new-found love for Historical novels about the Second World War. 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 Gab?ik 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”.

Publication date: April /May 2012 (first published in France in 2010) Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux / Harvill Secker Genre: Historical, Fiction?/NonFiction? / World War II

Author: Laurent Binet / Translated by Sam Taylor

Binet laurent hhhh