Jonathan Littell

The writer Jonathan Littell’s Jewish ancestors emigrated from Russia to the United States in the late 19th century. His father was the American journalist and prose writer Robert Littell, a Newsweek correspondent and author of popular spy novels. Since 2007, Jonathan Littell has been a French citizen and has lived in Spain (Barcelona). At the age of three, Jonathan Littell was brought to France; he studied in France and the United States. He graduated from Yale University in 1989. As a student, he met Burroughs, who had a profound influence on him. He translated Sade, Blanchot, Genet, and Quignard into English. He worked for the international humanitarian organization Action Against Hunger in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chechnya (where he was wounded), Congo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Since 2001, he worked on a novel about World War II and the Holocaust, seen through the eyes of an SS officer, The Kindly Ones. The novel was written in French and published in 2005 (the English version was published in 2009). The Russian translation of The Kindly Ones was published in 2011 by Ad Marginem.