He retracts some of his assertions he regrets his inadequacy as a historian. “I’ve been talking rubbish,” he exclaims.

Like all amateurs, he makes mistakes disarmingly, he admits them. Binet’s alter ego narrator is a zealous amateur historian. “Two men have to kill a third man.” Simple, no? But the narration is not. His projected assassination is Binet’s story, and Heydrich’s would-be assassins (Gabcík the Slovak and Kubiš the Czech) are Binet’s heroes. This is Heydrich in Prague in 1942: the Nazi Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, supremely powerful, supremely vulnerable. He is feared and loathed by passersby, yet he has no bodyguard. Picture a man being driven to work in an open-top car, taking the same route every day. Retrieved January 15, 2013.The evergreen allure of Nazis as the embodiment of evil is what drives this French author’s soul-stirring work: a hybrid of fact and meta-fiction that won the Prix Goncourt in 2010. 'National Book Critics Circle Names 2012 Award Finalists'. ^ 'Cannes: Jason Clarke, Rosamund Pike, Jack O'Connell Join WWII-Set Drama 'HHHH' (EXCLUSIVE)'.'It's Okay to Mistake the Author and the Narrator'. ^ 'Exclusive: The Missing Pages of Laurent Binet's HHhH'.^ Sulser, Eleonore (13 February 2010).^ a b c 'Le prix Goncourt du premier roman attribué à Laurent Binet pour HHhH'.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. HHhH has been translated into more than twenty languages. The Millions published the 'missing pages' in 2012. The editor also 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. The title was suggested by Binet's publisher, Grasset, instead of the 'too sci-fi' working title Opération Anthropoïde. The title is an initialism for Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich (' Himmler's brain is called Heydrich'), a quip about Heydrich in SS circles. 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. The novel follows the history of the operation and the lives of its protagonists-Reinhard Heydrich and his assassins Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. The novel was awarded the 2010 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman. The book recounts Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich in Prague during World War II. HHhH is the debut novel of French author Laurent Binet, published in 2010 by Grasset & Fasquelle.

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