DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Zone of Interest

Martin Amis author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:28th May '15

Should be back in stock very soon

This paperback is available in another edition too:

The Zone of Interest cover

The new novel from Martin Amis Shortlisted for the 2015 Walter Scott Prize

Amidst the horrors of Auschwitz, German officer, Angelus Thomsen, has found love.

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.

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

Auschwitz was, in the most essential sense, “unspeakable”. It’s thus something only creative writing can speak about. If you’re Amis, that is…. The most daring novelist of our time. -- John Sutherland * The Times *
The Zone of Interest is 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. It's stunning. -- Richard Ford
Nasty, timely, as good as anything Amis has written since London Fields… He has done his subject justice. * Spectator *
It is energetic, deeply researched, it is bracingly cruel… It makes the reader squirm and resist and finally laugh… A superb novel, an important one… Where was the career-crowning work that might finally win this author his Booker? Seriously, look no further. -- Tom Lamont * GQ *
He likes to stamp every sentence with his authority, like the name through a stick of rock, and here he reinvents hell on earth in his distinctively gaudy, insistent, elaborate prose. 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. -- Theo Tait * Sunday Times *

  • Short-listed for Walter Scott Prize 2015 (UK)
  • Long-listed for The Folio Prize 2015 (UK)
  • Long-listed for Gordon Burn Prize 2015 (UK)
  • Long-listed for I.M.P.A.C. Dublin Award 2016 (UK)

ISBN: 9780099593683

Dimensions: 197mm x 130mm x 22mm

Weight: 226g

320 pages