The Zone of Interest

An extraordinary novel by a classic of contemporary English literature, Martin Amis. “A Kafkaesque comedy about the Holocaust,” as one British critic called it—an absurd and stunning portrait of life and love in a concentration camp. The book has three main characters: the grotesque and even comical commandant of Auschwitz, Paul Doll; an officer from the same concentration camp, Gelo Thomsen; and the Jewish prisoner Zacharias Schmul. Thomsen falls in love with Hanne, the commandant’s wife, while Schmul is ready to commit murder or suicide to save his wife, who has fallen into the Nazis’ hands. Camp life intertwines with high-society parties, and officer intrigues and melodrama—against the backdrop of the brutal horror of World War II.

“Zone of Interest” is a multifaceted book. It’s a love story in a profoundly unromantic setting, a tragedy of millions of murdered people, an anti-war satire, and a tale about a contradictory human soul and the banality of evil.

The novel was recognized as the best book of the year by Time, NPR, The Village Voice, The Miami Herald, Financial Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, and BookRiot. The film adaptation received two Academy Awards, and—by the cruelest irony of fate—the author died on the day the film premiered. The audiobook version of “Zone of Interest” was performed by three vivid characterful actors: Kirill Radtsig, Alexander Gavrilin, and Grigory Perel.