The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
A dark satire…[that] creates a chilling sense of the banality of evil by depicting Nazis as petty bureaucrats in office cubicles, who chatter away about their work in the breezy, self-absorbed tones of characters in, say, the comic strip Dilbert or television's The Office. Although this approach to the subject may initially feel disturbingly irreverent, it seems clear that Mr. Amis wants to use this narrative strategy as a means of jolting the reader into a new understanding of how what one character calls "such a methodical, such a pedantic and such a literal exploration of the bestial" could take hold in "'a sleepy country of poets and dreamers'"…[The Zone of Interest] builds to a haunting conclusion that slams home the horror of the Holocaust.
From the Publisher
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
New York Times
A dark satire…[that] creates a chilling sense of the banality of evil by depicting Nazis as petty bureaucrats in office cubicles, who chatter away about their work in the breezy, self-absorbed tones of characters in, say, the comic strip Dilbert or television’s The Office. Although this approach to the subject may initially feel disturbingly irreverent, it seems clear that Mr. Amis wants to use this narrative strategy as a means of jolting the reader into a new understanding of how what one character calls ‘such a methodical, such a pedantic, and such a literal exploration of the bestial’ could take hold in ‘a sleepy country of poets and dreamers’…[The Zone of Interest] builds to a haunting conclusion that slams home the horror of the Holocaust.’
AudioFile
The graphic nature of this Holocaust story and Barrett’s fluctuating tones combine to make this a difficult listen for even the strongest souls.”
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2014-07-31
Can love survive against that most hellish of backdrops, the Nazi concentration camp? It's a question that Amis (Lionel Asbo, 2012, etc.) probes in his latest novel, an indelible and unsentimental exploration of the depths of the human soul.Opening in August 1942, the book's events are narrated from the viewpoints of three distinct characters. Arctic-eyed Golo Thomsen, a German officer, looks every bit the Aryan ideal, ensuring him a lusty welcome in beds across the Reich. He also happens to be the nephew of Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary, though his personal views regarding the Fuhrer's campaign are a good deal more opaque. Paul Doll is the queasily named camp commandant, a doltish yet wily drunkard whose cool wife, Hannah, has caught Thomsen's eye. As for Szmul, back in Poland he was a tender husband and father. In the camp, he is a member of the Sonderkommando, forced to herd fellow inmates into the gas chambers and dispose of their bodies. It's Szmul who recalls a fable about a king who commissioned a magic mirror that reflected one's soul. Nobody in the kingdom could look at it for 60 seconds without turning away. The camp, he says, is that mirror. Only you can't turn away. As Thomsen contrives to woo Hannah, word reaches the Officers' Club that German forces are surrounded at Stalingrad. Doll becomes increasingly paranoid and Szmul, a bearer of perilous Nazi secrets, strives to find a way to reclaim his life. With malice rampant, absurdity lurks in the shadows, drawn out by twisted details like bureaucratic euphemisms or the fact that Jews are made to pay for their own tickets aboard the trains bringing them to the camp. Brawny and urgent, it's unmistakably Amis, though without the gimmickry of Time's Arrow (1991).
