Reading (as) Violence in Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones

Abstract

Representations of the perpetrator’s perspective in Holocaust literature are often controversial, as is evident in the debate surrounding Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, a recent novel written from the perspective of an SS officer. This essay examines more closely both the capacity of Littell’s novel to unsettle readers and the ethical status of its techniques, with a focus on the means by which The Kindly Ones directs attention towards the process and practice of reading. While acknowledging readers’ and critics’ doubts about the novel, it explores the ways in which its adoption of this disturbing narrative perspective in fact carries a profound potential to mobilise readers’ ethical and critical sensibilities.