Littell's The Kindly Ones and the Aesthetic Moment of Max Aue: a Socio-aesthetical Approach

Almost three decades after the publication of ‘Male fantasies’; the fascinating cultural and psychological inquiry into the minds of German Freikorps officers in the interwar period by cultural sociologist Klaus Theweleit; the American-French author Jonathan Littell wrote the bestseller novel The Kindly Ones (original: Les Bienveillantes). The novel recounts the experiences of the fictional SS officer Max Aue and Littell is clearly well informed through former historical and cultural research; and especially through the research of Theweleit. Still; the novel The Kindly Ones rattled the cage after it was released in 2006. The book managed to win two important French awards; though multiple literary critics reviewed the book in shock; criticizing the novel with adjectives as monstrous and perverse. Why is the aesthetic fantasy; apparently; more forceful and appalling than the truth?