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Vice Blog

Paris - Da Waffen SS Code

This year's favourite to win the Goncourt Prize, the most coveted French literary prize, is a 912 page blockbuster on the Holocaust telling the memories of an imaginary Waffen SS officer doing his daily job of killing Jewish women and children on the Russian front line. This book, written in French by an American author called Jonathan Littell, has already sold out in French bookstores.

What the fuck happened? What can attract people to consume 912 pages of death camps, execution squads stories and fecal tsunamis (Max, the Nazi hero feels guilty and dreams he's covered by tons of human shit every night)? Maybe the reason is that French readers are simply tired of the current French novels; they're mostly short gay books about the boring sex life of narrow-minded wankers who live in Saint-Germain-Des-Près. Even shit-drenched genocide is preferable to that.