Jonathan Littell

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**Jonathan Littell**
Born:	October 10, 1967 (age 39) New York City, New York, USA
Occupation:	Novelist

Jonathan Littell (born 10 October 1967 in New York) is a French-American writer who writes mainly in French and now lives both in France and Spain.

1 Works
2 Biography
3 Bibliography
4 Awards
5 References

[edit] Works

Littell's novel Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones) was written in French and was published in France in 2006. The novel is the story of World War II and the Eastern Front, through the fictional memories by an articulate SS Obersturmbannführer, named Maximilien Aue.^[1]

Littell said he was inspired to write the novel after seeing a photograph of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a Soviet partisan who had been executed by the Nazis. He traces the original inspiration for the book from seeing Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah, an acclaimed documentary about the Holocaust, in 1989. He began research for the book in 2002 and wrote the first draft in 112 days.

Les Bienveillantes won the 2006 Prix Goncourt and the grand prix du roman of the Académie française and is a contender for several other French literary prizes. Reviews in France were generally good. The book sold 280,000 copies in its first six weeks.^[2]

Littell's only previously published book, the cyberpunk novel Bad Voltage (1989), tells the story of Lynx, a "half-breed" who lives in a futuristic version of Paris, France. Many scenes in the novel take place the Paris Catacombs. Littell has also published an intelligence report about the security organs of the Russian Federation.

[edit] Biography

Littell is the son of author Robert Littell. His ancestors were Jews who emigrated from Poland to the United States at the end of the 19th century. He attended Yale University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1989.^[3]

Littell arrived in France at age 3, then completed part of his education in his native country from age 13 to 16, before returning to France to achieve his baccalauréat. He returned to the United States again to study in college. From 1994 to 2001, he worked for the international humanitarian organization "Action Against Hunger." He headed the agency’s mission in Chechnya. In January 2001 he was victim of an ambush there, during which he was slightly wounded and Kenny Gluck from Médecins Sans Frontières was kidnapped.^[4]

Littell obtained French nationality in March 2007 after French officials made use of a clause stating that any French speaker whose "meritorious actions contribute to the glory of France" are allowed to become citizens, despite not fulfilling the requirement that he live in France for more than 6 months out of the year.^[5]