"HHhH," a Novel by Laurent Binet The nameless narrator of "HHhH" has serious misgivings about the novel he is writing. Like Laurent Binet, the book's French author, he has spent years examining the murder of the SS general Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in 1942 with a view to retelling the story as a thriller. But now he decides it is dishonest to invent descriptions, dialogue, thoughts and feelings on a subject as serious as this. The best he can do, he concludes, is to provide a running commentary on the truth (or otherwise) of what he is writing. "I just hope that, however bright and blinding the veneer of fiction that covers this fabulous story," he writes, "you will still be able to see through it to the historical reality that lies behind." He need not sound apologetic. By placing himself in the story, alongside Heydrich and his assassins, the narrator challenges the traditional way historical fiction is written. We join him on his research trips to Prague; we learn his reactions to documents, books and movies; we hear him admit that he sometimes imagines what he cannot possibly know. And, in the end, his making of a historical novel brings a raw truth to an extraordinary act of resistance. This literary tour de force, now smoothly translated by Sam Taylor, earned Binet the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman in 2010. To set the stage, Binet guides us through Heydrich's early years - his musical talent, his brief naval career and his marriage to a Nazi sympathizer - to his rapid rise as a favorite of the SS chief Heinrich Himmler. As the head of the SS security service known as the SD, he showed a special gift for bureaucracy. His motto could be: Files! Files! Always more files! Binet writes, adding nicely: "The Nazis love burning books, but not files." In all, Binet concludes, "Heydrich is the perfect Nazi prototype: tall, blond, cruel, totally obedient and deadly efficient." In September 1941, still only 37, he became interim protector of Bohemia and Moravia, where he was soon known as the Butcher of Prague. His curriculum vitae included organizing the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938, forming the Einsatzgruppen death squads in September 1939 and leading the January 1942 Wannsee Conference that put in motion the extermination of Europe's Jews. In some Nazi circles, he earned the nickname "HHhH," "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich" - "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich." Even as he writes, though, Binet (or the narrator) harbors doubts about his approach. He recounts a conversation between Heydrich and his father, then reprimands himself: "There is nothing more artificial in a historical narrative than this kind of dialogue." So he promises: "And just so there's no confusion, all the dialogues I invent (there won't be many) will be written like scenes from a play." Amid myriad other digressions, he also finds time to opine on movies and books about the Nazis - and there is no denying he has done his homework. Still, Binet learns little about the early lives of Heydrich's killers, Jozef Gabcik, a Slovak factory worker, and Jan Kubis, a Czech soldier. In their 20s, they were picked from a small army of Czechoslovaks who had escaped to Britain in the hope of fighting to free their country. Germany had by then absorbed the Sudetenland, annexed Bohemia and Moravia, and installed a collaborationist regime in Slovakia. The men knew they were likely to die. They did not know that Operation Anthropoid, as the plot was tagged, was driven by the need of the Czech government-in-exile to impress Churchill. After intense training, Gabcik and Kubis were given Czech clothes and new identities, as well as British-made Sten guns. In late December 1941, they parachuted from an R.A.F. plane into their occupied land. It would be five months before they were ready to act, but one thing worked in their favor: Every day, Heydrich was driven to his office in Prague Castle in an open Mercedes-Benz. On the morning of May 27, 1942, as Heydrich's car reached a hairpin bend, Gabcik opened fire, but his gun jammed. Heydrich jumped to his feet, pistol in hand, but Kubis threw a grenade that wounded him. While the two gunmen escaped, Heydrich was rushed to the hospital where, eight days later, he died of an infection. In reprisal, Hitler ordered the execution of 10,000 people, but he later accepted a lesser revenge: the destruction of the village of Lidice and the murder or deportation of its 500 inhabitants. Meanwhile, along with five other resisters, Gabcik and Kubis hid in the crypt of a Prague church. But their whereabouts was betrayed, and after a fierce assault by 800 SS storm troopers, three of the resisters were killed and the others committed suicide. "No one ever manages to persuade them that Heydrich's death was good for anything," our narrator tells us, without admitting that he is speculating. Perhaps I am writing this book to make them understand that they are wrong. At the end of "HHhH," however, one intriguing question remains unanswered: Is this a true account of how Binet wrote his book or did he plan its unusual structure from the start? Either way, the result is a gripping novel that brings us closer to history as it really happened. Alan Riding is a former European cultural correspondent for The Times. His most recent book is "And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris."