The Damp and the Dry: A Brief Incursion Into Fascist Territory

A critical biography of Belgium’s highest-ranking Nazi collaborator, Léon Degrelle, who fought with the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front during the Second World War and served as inspiration for the protagonist of Jonathan Littell’s bestselling, Prix Goncourt-winning novel The Kindly Ones ([Gallimard 2006] HarperCollins 2009). Originally published in French as Le sec et l’humide: Une brève incursion en territoire fasciste (Gallimard 2008) and translated into Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Czech, Catalan, and now English, The Damp and the Dry is a critical case study of a fascist true believer who was supported by both Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War and later sheltered by Franco in Spain. Littell pays close attention to Degrelle’s autobiographical writings, especially his account of fighting on the Eastern Front, The Russian Campaign, and uncovers an ＂anatomy of fascist discourse,＂ developing on the theories of German sociologist Klaus Theweleit, whose Afterword follows the text.

Jonathan Littell was born in 1967 in New York City and grew up in France. He worked for many years in humanitarian emergency operations in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, D. R. Congo, and other countries. His literary debut, The Kindly Ones (HarperCollins 2009), won the Prix Goncourt when it was first published in France as Les Bienveillantes in 2006, and has since been translated into nearly 40 languages. His other works available in English include The Fata Morgana Books (Two Lines Press 2013), Triptych: Three Studies after Francis Bacon (Notting Hill Editions 2013), and Syrian Notebooks: Inside the Homs Uprising (Verso 2015). His first feature documentary film, Wrong Elements, was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016.

Klaus Theweleit is a German sociologist. He is best known for his two-volume study of the psychology of Nazism, Male Fantasies (University of Minnesota Press, 1987-89), first published in Germany as Männerphantasien in 1977-78.

Max Lawton is a translator of Russian, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Turkish. He is the translator of eight novels by Vladimir Sorokin, including Telluria (New York Review Books Classics 2022) and Their Four Hearts (Dalkey Archive Press 2022).