The Kindly Ones is the first novel by Jonathan Littell, published in Italy in 2007 by Einaudi. The author takes the point of view of a SS ex officer, who tells the perversions and the horrors of the war and of the Holocaust. The purpose of this study is to investigate the reasons of a such great – and sometimes contested – success: what features have made the umpteenth book on the Holocaust, about the Shoah and Auschwitz, a literary event? What reactions and what marks leave today a contemporary novel which reflect these historical events? To answer is necessary to analyze the reception of the novel, looking in all the major Italian newspapers (La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, L’Unità, Il Giornale, Avvenire); we will consider reviews, comments and any kind of critical materials, which underline the specificity of the novel and the reasons for its wide resonance. We will try to understand, in this sense, how the daily press has estimated the eye of a modern writer on an already much discussed past and the image he transmits of the horrors of the camp and of the ideologies associated.