The Zone of Interest

This book is shortlisted for the 2015 Walter Scott Prize. "Surely his masterpiece...Intelligent, terrifying and comic...Amis has tackled the biggest questions with imagination and intelligence, and the ultimate strength of this masterly novel is that he knows, and shows, that although there is no answer to the questions Auschwitz poses, we must never stop asking them. Read it, ponder it - revel in it indeed - then read it again." (Allan Massie, Scotsman). There was an old story about a king who asked his favourite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didn't show you your reflection. Instead, it showed you your soul - it showed you who you really were. But the king couldn't look into the mirror without turning away, and nor could his courtiers. No one could. What happens when we discover who we really are? And how do we come to terms with it? Fearless and original, The Zone of Interest is a violently dark love story set against a backdrop of unadulterated evil, and a vivid journey into the depths and contradictions of the human soul. "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