The novel follows the history of the operation and the lives of its protagonists—Reinhard Heydrich and his assassins Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. It is interlaced with the author's account of the process of researching and writing the book, his commentary about other literary and media treatments of the subject, and reflections about the extent to which the behavior of real people may of necessity be fictionalised in a historical novel.[1][2][3]
The novel's editor requested the cut of about twenty pages criticizing Jonathan Littell's Les Bienveillantes, another novel about the SS in World War II that was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 2006.[4]The Millions published the "missing pages" in 2012.[5]
Title
The title is an initialism for Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich ("Himmler's brain is called Heydrich"), a quip about Heydrich in SS circles.[6] The title was suggested by Binet's publisher, Grasset, instead of the "too sci-fi" working title Opération Anthropoïde.
Translations
HHhH was written in French and has been translated into more than twenty languages.[7] The English translation by Sam Taylor was published in the US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 24 April 2012 and in the UK by Harvill Secker on 3 May 2012.
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