Memory, Narrative, and History in Laurent Binet’s HHhH

In an interview for Paris-ci la culture, Laurent Binet defines his unique creation the infra roman as a récit (narrative or account in French) as a narrative that uses all the techniques a novel permits except for one minor one: fiction. He uses the techniques of a novel to tell the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Gestapo, Hitler’s Aryan wet dream, and just all around Nazi nightmare. The book raises interesting questions about the relationship between History and literature, memory and history, and also about how history is remembered and recounted. There have been writers including Laurent Binet himself who have argued against messy historical fiction that is careless with the facts of history and is just interested in using history to find a scenario for a novel. For the purposes of this entry, let’s concentrate on the book itself, the effects of the literary techniques that Binet uses, and the alternating and interwoven meta-narrative aspects of the text that make for a structure that very much mimics human memory and jumps between the past and the present and actually tries to blend and superimpose the two.

Binet’s infra roman exists in this interstitial space between a historical narrative that might cover the documented facts of the assassination of the chief of the Gestapo and a literary narrative that might try to bring it to life through narration and fictionalizing. Put in another way, it’s more than just the historical facts but less than a novel. It’s worth mentioning about Binet himself and the narrator that they have a particular orientation to and interest in History. They both believe the facts should be respected and that anyone who writes about History in any capacity should do their due diligence in terms of documentation and research. But they both also value a well told narrative and the aesthetic and stylistic effects offered by a literary narrative albeit without the fiction. It’s up to the reader to decide whether that is possible since how you tell you a story necessarily affects the perception and experience of it. They both emphasize the novelistic and exciting aspects of the real story of the assassination and of World War II in general. The difficulty of that endeavor and the tension of walking that tightrope without falling into fiction territory is depicted in and the whole point of HHhH.

Let’s start with the technique of narration. The narrator narrates the events preceding and succeeding the assassination and obviously the moment itself in the present tense. The narrator repeatedly tries to assure us he is not inventing or adding anything in but he does try to imagine and visualize the historical scene he is describing. Now obviously it is not possible to do that without inventing a little bit since there are some details and conversations that he nor anyone else could not possibly know or have documentation of such as the redness of Himmler’s cheeks during a particular scene or how Heydrich felt or what he was thinking holding a sceptre. However, it is very much a narration that functions the way human memory functions as in with interruptions, alternating between past and present, other events that might be related or tangential, and of course the present inserting itself into or superimposing itself on the past.

He describes the amazing story of a football match between the Ukrainians and Germans. The Ukrainians who were beating the Nazis (despite the Nazis cheating and injuring one of the opposing team’s players) were threatened with execution if they didn’t let the Nazis win because in addition to being cheaters the immaculate Aryan race is a bunch of sore losers. In response to the threat, the Ukrainians played even better and harder and walloped the Nazis 5 to 1. And then they did it again in the rematch 5 to 3. The Nazis didn’t take too well to losing and followed through on their threat of executing players. If you can’t beat them, kill them.

Although this is completely unrelated to the assassination and would very likely be left out of both historical narratives and literary narratives due to this tangential nature, I think we can all agree that it’s an amazing testament of courage, defiance, and resistance made even better because it’s true!

And then there is the moment of the assassination itself. When describing the actual moment, the author imagines himself there, on the street in Prague, the two Czech parachutists waiting to assassinate the man whom Hitler thought was a bit much and had an iron heart. When describing the moment, the narrator plays with both time, slowing down the moment of the assassination, and perspective. He even puts the reader in the place of Heydrich in his black Mercedes addressing us in the second person as though we were Heydrich.

Using the techniques of the novel to tell the story of a historical event in an infra roman has two important effects and uses. The first effect is that it makes History real, lived, experienced, which is something purely historical accounts reporting the past can’t or won’t do. Now obviously one could argue that how the story is recounted by this particular author and narrator is his creation not in the sense of fictionalized but a recounting of his re-membering of this historical event. Someone else might re-member it differently. It’s up to the reader to judge whether that makes it a fiction or not. Arguably, it is often said memory itself is creation, a fiction of the brain. The second effect is that experiencing History as real and remembered in this way creates space to include emotional reactions to History which are not always documented but necessary. The emotional reactions we have to the Ukrainians who decided handing the Nazis their asses on the field was worth death, to all the Czech people who harbored and helped the Resistance in small but essential covert ways that might be left out of historical narratives due to narrative economy, to the bravery of the actual heroes who fought it out in the church, to the horror of the reprisal massacre at Lidice can be captured and experienced in Binet’s narrative. None of that is fiction but the very real subjective reaction and amazement at History.