Martin Amis

A searing portrait of life and unexpected love in a concentration camp explores the depths and contradictions of the human soul as well as the capacity of individuals who are tested to acknowledge their true selves. By the author of Time's Arrow. 50,000 first printing.

The Zone of Interest

Tillie

Listen. Imagine how disgusting it would be if anything good came out of that place. There.

Do you fear uniforms and crowds and naked flames and the smell of wet garbage? Are you terrified of sleep? Does it hurt and hurt and hurt? Is there a tattoo on your soul?

‘No, you haven't, I don't think you have. Only a victim has the right to say there's no coming back from it. And they hardly ever do. They're desperate to restart their lives. The ones that are truly broken are the ones we never hear from. They're not talking to - they're not talking to anybody You, you were always your husband's victim, but you were never a victim.’

..there was something unrecognisable in the air. Whatever it was, it was not the return of normality. There had been no normality to return to, not after 1914, not in Germany. You had to be at least fifty-five to have an adult recollection of normality. But there was something in the air, and it was new.

Under National Socialism you looked in the mirror and saw vour soul. You found yourself out. This applied, par excellence and a fortiori (by many magnitudes), to the victims, or to those who lived for more than an hour and had time to confront their own reflections. And yet it also applied to everyone else, the malefactors, the collaborators, the witnesses, the conspirators, the outright martyrs, and even the minor obstructors, like me, and like Hannah Doll. We all discovered, or helplessly revealed, who we were. Who somebody really was. That was the zone of interest.

Earlier I said that you couldn't live through the Third Germany without discovering who you were, more or less (always a revelation, and often untoward); and without discovering who others were, too.

I procured a car, a filthy old Tornax (whose blackened and oft-needed crank kept making me think of a broken swastika), and boldly drove south-east. My purpose? My purpose was to get closer to the end of hope to exhaust it, and so try to be rid of it.

The second thrust was delivered to justify the first. The third to justify the second. And so it goes on, until the end of strength.

..they all yelled, they all hollered fit to kill. And I vaguely and confusedly wondered if the story of National Socialism could have unfolded in any other language…

It won't be this morning, it won't even be this afternoon. It will be at the end of the day, as darkness falls.

Although I live in the present, and do so with pathological fixity, I remember everything that has happened to me since I came to the Lager. Everything. To remember an hour would take an hour. To remember a month would take a month.

I cannot forget because I cannot forget. And now at the last all these memories will have to be dispersed. 

There is only one possible outcome, and it is the outcome I want. With this I prove that my life is mine, and mine alone. 

On my way over there I will inhume everything I've written, in the Thermos flask beneath the gooseberry bush.

And, by reason of that, not all of me will die.

The war was finally coming home to the place where it started - coming home to the Wilhelmstrasse.

l am no longer afraid of death, though I am still afraid of dying. I am afraid of dying because it is going to hurt. That's all there is attaching me to life: the fact that leaving it is going to hurt. It'll hurt.

..ended with the words, “We shall not die now, the history of our nation will immortalise us, our initiative and spirit are alive and flourishing...”

I feel that if you knew every day, every hour, every minute of human history, you would find no exemplum, no model, no precedent.

“I find it helps a bit', she said, 'with the smell." 

That last word was still on her tongue when we heard something, something borne on the wind... It was a helpless, quavering chord, a fugal harmony of human horror and dismay.

Donald

I read Ozick and Hoffman's critical reviews after finishing this, and I accept that both of them might be right about this book. But... I thought it was very good.

Ian Mason

Gavin Tracey

Amidst the horrors of Auschwitz, German officer, Angelus Thomsen, has found love. But unfortunately for Thomsen, the object of his affection is already married to his camp commandant, Paul Doll. As Thomsen and Doll’s wife pursue their passion – the gears of Nazi Germany’s Final Solution grinding around them – Doll is riven by suspicion. With his dignity in disrepute and his reputation on the line, Doll must take matters into his own hands and bring order back to the chaos that reigns around him. ‘It is exceptionally brave.... Shakespearean.... It’s exciting; it’s alive; it’s more than slightly mad. As the title suggests, it is dreadfully interesting.’ Sunday Times

Elliott Mower

Neta Steingart

Liz Prinz

Lea de Sousa

Shortlisted for the 2015 Walter Scott Prize 'Surely his masterpieceâe¦ Intelligent, terrifying and comicâe¦ Amis has tackled the biggest questions with imagination and intelligence, and the ultimate strength of this masterly novel is that he knows, and shows, that although there is no answer to the questions Auschwitz poses, we must never stop asking them. Read it, ponder it âe" revel in it indeed âe" then read it again.' Allan Massie, Scotsman There was an old story about a king who asked his favourite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didnâe(tm)t show you your reflection. Instead, it showed you your soul âe" it showed you who you really were. But the king couldnâe(tm)t look into the mirror without turning away, and nor could his courtiers. No one could. What happens when we discover who we really are? And how do we come to terms with it? Fearless and original, The Zone of Interest is a violently dark love story set against a backdrop of unadulterated evil, and a vivid journey into the depths and contradictions of the human soul.

The Zone of Interest

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