HHhH is a German saying from the time of the Third Reich: Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich. “Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich,” the SS joked. Reinhard Heydrich was the most feared man in Hitler's cabinet. Monster from the lair of monsters. He had unlimited power and even greater ruthlessness. There were incredible rumors about him, each more terrible than the other. And every rumor was true. Heydrich was one of the ideologists of the Holocaust. Heydrich developed a plan for a fake Polish attack on German residents, which became the reason for the outbreak of World War II. It was he who ruled Czechoslovakia after its occupation; he was nicknamed the Executioner of Prague. Heydrich was assassinated on May 27, 1942 by two desperate guys, Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, who became national heroes of the Czech Republic. After the assassination attempt, Gabchik and Kubis hid in the Orthodox Church of Cyril and Methodius. The church was surrounded by a whole army of soldiers... Laurent Binet's book, which received the Goncourt Prize for his debut novel, tells about this story, one of the most incredible in the Second World War. The book became an international bestseller, translated into more than thirty languages. According to French critics, what makes Laurent Binet’s almost documentary text a real novel is not the interweaving of truth with fiction, not the artistic description of historical figures, but “the author’s passionate attitude towards history as a constant source of reflection and self-knowledge.”