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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2014, 320 pages
Paperback:
Jul 2015, 320 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Kate Braithwaite
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Powered by both wit and compassion, and in characteristically vivid prose, Martin Amis's unforgettable new novel excavates the depths and contradictions of the human soul.
Once upon a time there was a king, and the king commissioned his favorite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didn't show you your reflection. It showed you your soul - it showed you who you really were.
The wizard couldn't look at it without turning away. The king couldn't look at it. The courtiers couldn't look at it. A chestful of treasure was offered to anyone who could look at it for sixty seconds without turning away. And no one could.
The Zone of Interest is a love story with a violently unromantic setting. Can love survive the mirror? Can we even meet each other's eye, after we have seen who we really are?
Powered by both wit and compassion, and in characteristically vivid prose, Martin Amis's unforgettable new novel excavates the depths and contradictions of the human soul.
3. SZMUL: Sonder?
Ihr seit achzen johr, we whisper, und ihr hott a fach.
Once upon a time there was a king, and the king commissioned his favourite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didn't show you your reflection. It showed you your soul—it showed you who you really were.
The wizard couldn't look at it without turning away. The king couldn't look at it. The courtiers couldn't look at it. A chestful of treasure was offered to any citizen in this peaceful land who could look at it for sixty seconds without turning away. And no one could.
I find that the KZ is that mirror. The KZ is that mirror, but with one difference. You can't turn away.
We are of the Sonderkommando, the SK, the Special Squad, and we are the saddest men in the Lager. We are in fact the saddest men in the history of the world. And of all these very sad men I am the saddest. Which is demonstrably, even measurably true. I am by some distance the earliest number, the lowest number...
The fragmented narration is a strength. Who can look at such horror for sustained periods of time? Not the reader and certainly not the three men telling the story. The choppy switches that Amis creates between the mechanics of mass genocide and scenes of domesticity and child rearing are also highly moving. Equally the comedic interplay between characters, although jarring to read, is in fact wholly appropriate, driving home the unpalatable reality that the extermination of Jewish people carried out at Auschwitz was a crime perpetrated by complex human beings, living, laughing, loving and loathing while they worked...continued
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(Reviewed by Kate Braithwaite).
The road to publication for Martin Amis' latest novel, The Zone of Interest, has been less smooth than might be imagined, given that Amis is one of the stars of the British literary firmament. The New York Times reported that in France and Germany, Amis' longtime publishers rejected it on the grounds, in France, that its humor is puzzling and, in Germany, that it would be difficult to market.
Given that The Zone of Interest takes an unflinching look at the mechanics of death and body disposal at Auschwitz, and that Amis includes a love story and strong elements of gallows humor within the novel, perhaps those publishers have a point. But Amis, who describes himself as "surprised and disappointed," is unlikely to be too perturbed and may ...
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