Angelus Thomsen works at Auschwitz, dividing his attention between the demands of his post and an intimate fixation.
Thomsen moves through a world of bureaucratic meetings, garden parties, and marital rivalries, all conducted in the shadow of industrialised murder.
The machinery of the war operates with chilling efficiency, yet the men who oversee it concern themselves with promotion, jealousy, and reputation. Through Thomsen, Commandant Paul Doll and those around them, The Zone of Interest exposes the moral evasions and self-justifications that allow atrocity to coexist with ordinary ambition.
By placing its focus not on victims but on perpetrators and bystanders, The Zone of Interest confronts the reader with the unsettling proximity between civility and cruelty, forcing a reckoning with complicity, desire, and the banality of evil inside the Holocaust.
'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
Vorwort
The new novel from Martin Amis
Shortlisted for the 2015 Walter Scott Prize
Autorentext
Martin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century - in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience - he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023.
Klappentext
THE NOVEL THAT INSPIRED THE OSCAR WINNING FILM
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
Zusammenfassung
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