The Damp and the Dry
A Brief Incursion into Fascist Territory
Will be published approx. on 10. December 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
144 pages
978-1-68219-489-8 (ISBN)
Description
How do fascists think? An acclaimed novelists looks at the life and writing of a prominent Nazi collaborator to investigate the links between psychology, language, and action on the far right.
Leon Degrelle was Belgium's highest-ranking Nazi collaborator and a fanatical Waffen-SS officer who fought on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. Admired by Hitler and Mussolini and later sheltered by Franco in Spain, Degrelle embodied the figure of the fascist true believer long after the defeat of the Third Reich.
In a richly illustrated text, Jonathan Littell here subjects Degrelle's main autobiographical writings, his memoir The Russian Campaign, to a forensic reading, bringing it into confrontation with the work of a renowned writer on psychology and fascism, Klaus Theweleit, who provides an afterword to the book. Littell dissects Degrelle's prose to expose what he terms an "anatomy of fascist discourse": a recurring set of metaphors, obsessions, and psychic structures through which fascist ideology understands the body, violence, purity, and the enemy.
The Damp and the Dry moves beyond biography to reveal how fascism thinks and speaks. It is a disturbing and incisive study of authoritarian mentality-one that illuminates not only the history of twentieth-century fascism, but its enduring rhetorical and psychological appeal.
Leon Degrelle was Belgium's highest-ranking Nazi collaborator and a fanatical Waffen-SS officer who fought on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. Admired by Hitler and Mussolini and later sheltered by Franco in Spain, Degrelle embodied the figure of the fascist true believer long after the defeat of the Third Reich.
In a richly illustrated text, Jonathan Littell here subjects Degrelle's main autobiographical writings, his memoir The Russian Campaign, to a forensic reading, bringing it into confrontation with the work of a renowned writer on psychology and fascism, Klaus Theweleit, who provides an afterword to the book. Littell dissects Degrelle's prose to expose what he terms an "anatomy of fascist discourse": a recurring set of metaphors, obsessions, and psychic structures through which fascist ideology understands the body, violence, purity, and the enemy.
The Damp and the Dry moves beyond biography to reveal how fascism thinks and speaks. It is a disturbing and incisive study of authoritarian mentality-one that illuminates not only the history of twentieth-century fascism, but its enduring rhetorical and psychological appeal.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Full-color photographs in sections
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 139 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-68219-489-8 (9781682194898)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
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 forty 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 Maennerphantasien 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).
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 Maennerphantasien 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).