NEW YORK A 900-page World War II novel that was the talk of the Frankfurt Book Fair will be published in the United States in 2008.

Publisher HarperCollins won an extensive bidding war for Jonathan Littell's "The Kindly Ones," already a best seller in France under its original title, "Les Bienveillantes." The book's narrator is a Nazi SS officer.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

"'The Kindly Ones' is a brilliant and terrifying novel that delves into the darkest chapters of 20th-century history and into the darkest realm of the human psyche," HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham said Thursday in a statement.

"There's nothing like it and I believe that it will be acclaimed in the U.S. (as it has been in France) as a true masterpiece of our age."