The Nazi and his assassins

Laurent Binet obsessed over the killing of Reinhard Heydrich, says Richard Fitzpatrick

THE French writer Laurent Binet’s debut novel is about the assassination in Prague in May 1942 on Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi feared “as the most dangerous man in the Third Reich”.

HHhH, which is an acronym for Himmler’s Him heisst Heydrich (“Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich”) dazzled the literary world on publication, first by scooping several awards in France, including the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2010, and on translation into English, by the reviews of esteemed peers. “HHhH blew me away,” gushed Bret Easton Ellis. Martin Amis found it “gripping”.