The Zone of Interest
The novel that inspired the Oscar-winning film
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An absolute soul-crusher of a book, the brilliant latest from Amis (Lionel Asbo: State of England) is an astoundingly bleak love story, as it were, set in a German concentration camp, which Thomsen, one of the book's three narrators, refers to as Kat Zet. Thomsen, the nephew of Hitler's private secretary, Martin Bormann, has a vague role as a liaison at Buna Werke, where the Germans are attempting to synthesize oil for the war effort using slave labor. He sets his sights on Hannah Doll, wife of camp commandant Paul, who is the second of three narrators as well as a drunk whose position is under threat. As Thomsen gets closer with Hannah, both of them, horrified at what's going on, conspire to undermine Paul Hannah at home and Thomsen around the camp. Paul, meanwhile, follows up his suspicions about his wife and Thomsen by involving Szmul, the book's third narrator and a Jew who disposes of the corpses in the gas chamber, in a revenge plot. Amis took on the Holocaust obliquely in Time's Arrow. Here he goes at it straight, and the result is devastating.
