Martin Amis
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The Zone of Interest Paperback – 7 July 2015
by Martin Amis (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 2,194 ratings
NOW AN ACADEMY AWARD(R)-WINNING MAJOR MOTION PICTURE - AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - From one of the most virtuosic authors in the English language: a powerful novel, written with urgency and moral force, that explores life--and love--among the Nazi bureaucrats of Auschwitz.
"A masterpiece.... Profound, powerful and morally urgent.... A benchmark for what serious literature can achieve." --San Francisco Chronicle
Martin Amis first tackled the Holocaust in 1991 with his bestselling novel Time's Arrow. He returns again to the Shoah with this astonishing portrayal of life in "the zone of interest," or "kat zet"--the Nazis' euphemism for Auschwitz. The narrative rotates among three main characters: Paul Doll, the crass, drunken camp commandant; Thomsen, nephew of Hitler's private secretary, in love with Doll's wife; and Szmul, one of the Jewish prisoners charged with disposing of the bodies. Through these three narrative threads, Amis summons a searing, profound, darkly funny portrait of the most infamous place in history.
An epilogue by the author elucidates Amis's reasons and method for undertaking this extraordinary project.
Who are you? You don’t know. Then you come to the Zone of Interest, and it tells you who you are.
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But the eyes are the windows to the soul, and when the soul is gone the eyes too are untenanted.
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Review
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR, The Village Voice, The Miami Herald, Financial Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, BookRiot
"I was riveted by Martin Amis's The Zone of Interest, with its daring projection into the mind and 'heart' of a character . . . It felt like a fitting way to spy on historical events that are impossible to look at but that must, nevertheless, always be kept in sight." --John Colapinto, The New Yorker
"Engrossing. . . . Rich in black comedy." --Chicago Tribune
"Elegant and subtle. . . . An intriguing, sophisticated effort to understand the daily culture of genocide." --Los Angeles Times
"[A] serious and diligently researched work with a streak of deadpan humor that reframes, and reemphasizes, the horror at hand." --Entertainment Weekly
"Powerful and electric.... A book that may stand for years as the triumph of his career." --NPR
"This is a novel that will endure.... A novel whose adventurousness is at the level of its ethical register, its attempt ... to imagine the unimaginable." --The Guardian (London)
"A tour de force of sheer verbal virtuosity, and a brilliant, celestially upsetting novel inspired by no less than a profound moral curiosity about human beings." --Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sportswriter
"Signature Amis at his most inventive.... It is precisely through such inspired and irreverent fluency that his dead-serious purpose is realized." --The Washington Post
"The Zone of Interest harrows in the true sense of the word, churning up our preconceptions and assumptions. It is a work of artistic courage, chilling comedy and incontestable moral seriousness." --Financial Times
"Heartbreaking.... [Amis is] a virtuosically vivid writer." --The Atlantic
"His finest so far.... Astonishing.... A tragicomic moral blowtorch worthy of Swift." --The Daily Beast
"Compelling.... Harrowingly effective." --Slate
"Returning to the Holocaust--the subject of Time's Arrow, still among [Amis's] best books--Amis seems greatly energized, addressing the most serious theme with rigour, sophistication, and, most astonishingly, wit." --The Village Voice
"[Amis] is still the scourge of cliché and the supreme man of letters. . . . Dazzl[es] us once more with verbal dexterity and gutsy inventiveness." --Minneapolis Star Tribune
"[A] pulverizing novel about identity and humanity. . . in equal measure funny and crushing, with emphasis on how chaos and mass psychosis act on the souls living through it." --The Miami Herald
"Moving. . . . Genius. . . . Capture[s] that contrast between frivolity and horror with elegance and irony." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"An important book--relentless, excoriating, blisteringly well-written. . . . Mr. Amis is one of our most accomplished writers. . . . Fiercely sharp-witted, his writing has the capacity to be so unique and dexterous as to create the impression he works from some higher alphabet than the rest of us." --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Exceptionally brave. . . . An extended rumination, a nightmare. . . . It's exciting; it's alive; it's more than slightly mad. As the title suggests, it's dreadfully interesting." --The Sunday Times
"Displays both restraint and humanity. . . . Takes on themes of immense gravity. . . . Martin Amis isn't new to the business of turning the horrors of history into fiction, but he has never done so more thoughtfully than in this disquieting novel. . . . He has confronted its challenges with honour and delicacy." --The Times Literary Supplement (London)
"As good as anything Amis has written since London Fields (1989), and one he obviously felt compelled to write. He has done his subject justice." --The Spectator
"Highly cerebral and innovative, and also human, humane--even humbling--this is a brave, inquiring work from a literary maverick whose biggest problem as an artist has been his rampaging talent. He has certainly harnessed it here." --The Irish Times
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About the Author
MARTIN AMISis the author of 15 novels--among them Zone of Interest, London Fields, Time's Arrow, The Information, and Night Train--along with the memoir Experience, the novelized self-portrait Inside Story, two collections of stories, and seven nonfiction books. He died in 2023.
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Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis (born 25 August 1949) is a British novelist. His best-known novels are Money (1984) and London Fields (1989). He has received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir Experience and has been listed for the Booker Prize twice to date (shortlisted in 1991 for Time's Arrow and longlisted in 2003 for Yellow Dog). Amis served as the Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester until 2011. In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
Amis's work centres on the excesses of late-capitalist Western society, whose perceived absurdity he often satirises through grotesque caricature; he has been portrayed as a master of what the New York Times called "the new unpleasantness". Inspired by Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce, as well as by his father Kingsley Amis, Amis himself went on to influence many successful British novelists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including Will Self and Zadie Smith.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Top reviews from Australia
Phil
5.0 out of 5 stars This book is terribly good and terribleReviewed in Australia on 2 February 2024
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Written with such intensity and vitality. I was there. Nothing g else to say. A terrific book about a terrible time.
The only complaint is the misuse of numerals for words. 1 for one. 2 for two. Etc. I sent hundreds of corrections through my kindle reading. In a way I was thankful for the diversion away from such a terrible narrative.
Still, I'd like a fee paid for all my hard work.
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars funny and impeccably constructedReviewed in Australia on 23 December 2014
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dark, funny and impeccably constructed.
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Ms Theodora R Chapman
5.0 out of 5 stars The unimaginable imaginedReviewed in Australia on 18 September 2015
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This book triggers a mix of curiosity and revulsion not unlike the experience of witnessing a car crash. The author has masterfully captured the mundanity that any repetitive activity entails and the stresses on those in charge to meet the demands of their superiors to increase productivity. However, the work being done is running an extermination camp during the Second World War Germany.
This is an extraordinary work that provides an insight into the way in which mass murder became an industry and how it's possible to survive in the face of overwhelming atrocities.
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Anne Connolly
3.0 out of 5 stars Nothing sane to report.Reviewed in Australia on 17 October 2015
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Amis quotes 'nothing sane to report' in this book in reference to a report after WW1. This book is about that - no sanity existed in the third Reich. He delves into the insanity and its a gruesome portrayal. His is of course the master at this; getting into the minds of the disturbed. Usually though there is a balance with at least one character who grounds us. Not here. There is madness all around, but there is also tedium. It's the drudgery of life and the meaningless that he has captured. a very difficult read. You owe it to him and to us to keep reading though, this is just rising to the surface again.
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Diogenes
4.0 out of 5 stars A Tough ReadReviewed in Australia on 23 May 2017
Set in and around an extermination camp during World War II - and based on real events - Amis' novel is hard-hitting and a tough read. That said, it is Amis at his intelligent and imaginative best. If you like your endings happy, you probably should pass on this one: humanity at its worst (and occasionally its best).
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Len Ware
1.0 out of 5 stars One StarReviewed in Australia on 9 October 2014
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The long German names of characters was annoying.
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Shadow
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book, but the movie is better. Read "Time's Arrow" insteadReviewed in the United States on 16 March 2024
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I can see that Jonathan Glazer got his idea from the unique perspective of this book (the romantic shenanigans and personal backstabbing of the Nazi protagonists, with the horrors of Auschwitz offstage, in the wings). Where the movie focuses on the relentless *sounds* of the horror, encroaching on happy Nazi home life, the book focuses on the *smells.* The book also has more of a plot, with a rising (sexual, domestic) crisis and a twist at the end. I "enjoyed" the book (if you can use that word) and put off seeing the film till I had finished it. But then the film completely blew me away. You don't need to have read the book to experience the film. It's a good book, but the film will far outlive it. Read Amis's "Time's Arrow" instead for a Holocaust book that will floor you with its inventiveness and power.
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Oliver Page
5.0 out of 5 stars Grappling With The UnthinkableReviewed in Italy on 4 May 2024
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I first read Amis in my twenties. His uncompromisingly savage and shockingly funny early works - Money, Dead Babies and Success - just exploded off the page in an irreverent, virtuoso linguistic tour de force. Over the years I’ve read some other works and often found the same flare stylistically but no real other reason to read his books. Although they are always extraordinary to read, I haven’t found them to be long-lasting works of literature. So when I realized that the Oscar-winning film, The Zone of Interest, was based on his novel I immediately wanted to read it.
Who else but Amis could find the language to grapple with the rational madness of the holocaust and unthinkable acceptance of the people caught up in National Socialism? The novel puts the reader in the shoes of various characters living in a concentration camp and gives voice to their everyday thoughts and experiences. From Doll the camp commander to the officers and soldiers under his command, to his wife Hannah. As you would expect with Amis there is dark comedy but not to make the reader laugh, rather to emphasize the grotesque and the stupidity of the men behind the regime. There is no sentimentalism nor indulgence in the human suffering of the victims, rather there is an attempt to depict the people who carried out the atrocities or were passive witnesses to them. What most impressed me about the book was the deeply emotional nature of the characters and their attempts to hide or deny the truth of who they really are. And surviving themselves and living with themselves is yet another form of death inflicted by the Nazi the regime.
Highly believable, brilliantly written, never heavy or dull. This is the book I was hoping to read - a truly great writer grappling with the unthinkable, navigating human characters through the darkest hour in our history. Recommended!
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Jet
5.0 out of 5 stars BrilliantReviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 April 2024
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A really difficult read about a horrific subject but a unique piece of writing, a work of art.
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Roberto Rockmann
5.0 out of 5 stars Grande livroReviewed in Brazil on 16 February 2018
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One of the best books read in the last five years, with first-person narrators: the commandant of the Auschwits concentration camp, a Nazi officer, adopted son of Hiltler's secretary who falls in love with the commandant's wife, and a Jewish head of the "cleaning team" ".
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Alfred J. Kwak
5.0 out of 5 stars MasterpieceReviewed in France on 16 May 2016
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As opening chapters go --constantly improved while writing the rest-- this one is brilliant, introducing many of the characters of this deeply disturbing novel. I write this after my first reading of Martin Amis’ (MA) best and most ambitious creation. It deals with the state of humanity in 1942 and onwards in the most infamous of all Nazi camps, with frequent flashbacks to one character’s experiences in the 1920s and -30s. The symbolism of tomcat Max, the wordplay on ‘must’ and his introduction of consciencious objector Humilia, a Witness and domestic servant at the Kommandant’s villa, are only some of the highlights of Ch. 1. And it goes on and on.
It paints the outcomes of a mad, evil ideology, challenging readers’ imaginations, sometimes providing graphic descriptions. MA adorned his most evil character with the lovable name of Paul Doll, named his most slippery and best-connected marionet Angelus (‘Golo’) Thomsen, whilst Szmul, head of Jewish trustees, a Sonder, is a collaborator always aware of his fate, tries to save or prolong one life per arriving transport. MA develops and follows this trio in six lively and eventful chapters, allowing them to open their hearts, speak their minds, express their hopes and worries amidst a rich cast of supporting or minor characters, all representing shades of evil.
MA is a lifelong, brilliant linguist and namegiver. Here, he has emasculated the Umlaut from all German words and thought up terrible personal names for Doll’s colleagues. Living in NL, my favourite is ‘Eikel’. This novel contains more memorable sentences and paragraphs than some writers achieve in their lifetime. Impressively, MA concludes this work with a stunning afterword , acknowledging and thanking the sources for his novel and arguing to take a fresh look at the Austrian from Linz, who captured the heart and soul of another nation, then strove to conquer the world... A second reading makes this novel even more awesome.
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