Monday, December 11, 2006

Jonathan Littell

A one-book library on the Holocaust? ...



I've finnished reading "Les Bienvéillantes". One week ago, in fact. No time for a proper blog-reviewing. Just a brief thought. One has to concentrate oneself on a few crucial historical events and try to understand it at some deep level rather than trying to attain an encyclopaedic, inevitably superficial, knowledge of History. I've been trying to understand politics by concentrating on the Russian Revolution, for instance; or I've been trying to understand contemporary international relations mainly by focusing on post-1922 Middle East.
A crucial historic-philosophic interrogation one has to deal with is, obviously, the Holocaust. Sometimes you need literature rather than non-fiction to capture the essence of a given historical period. This book by J. Littell must surely be seen, from now on, as essential reading on the subject...

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