Martin Amis’ haunting novel “The Zone of Interest” unflinchingly explores the darkest depths of the human soul against the chilling backdrop of the Holocaust. This gripping story will leave you pondering the very nature of evil long after you turn the final page.
Immerse yourself in this unforgettable tale of love, death, and the darkest corners of the human psyche. Keep reading for a deeper dive into Amis’ harrowing masterpiece.
Table of Contents
Genres
Biography, Memoir, Society, Culture, Historical fiction, Literary fiction, War fiction, Psychological fiction, Satire, Dark comedy, Existentialism, Postmodernism, Holocaust literature, European literature
“The Zone of Interest” takes place in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. The story primarily follows three narrators – Angelus “Golo” Thomsen, the nephew of Hitler’s private secretary Martin Bormann; Paul Doll, a Nazi commandant; and Szmul, a Jewish Sonderkommando prisoner.
Thomsen, despite being a committed Nazi, falls in love with Doll’s wife Hannah. Meanwhile, Doll descends into drunken madness as he struggles with both his wife’s infidelity and the moral weight of his role in the mass extermination of Jews.
Szmul provides a chilling view from inside the gas chambers and crematoria. The story explores the mundane everydayness of evil, the human capacity for cruelty and indifference, and the struggle to find meaning and morality in a world gone mad.
Review
“The Zone of Interest” is a brilliant but deeply unsettling work of Holocaust fiction. Amis’ deft prose and pitch-black gallows humor create a disturbing contrast with the novel’s ghastly subject matter. While frequently graphic and upsetting, Amis treats the Holocaust with grave seriousness and the sharp insight of a moral philosopher.
His three narrators allow him to explore the psyches of both the perpetrators and victims, exposing how ordinary people can allow and participate in extraordinary evil. The novel’s depiction of the “zone of interest” – the area around the gas chambers – is chilling and unforgettable.
Though certainly not an easy read given the harrowing subject, this is an important and profound work of literature that showcases Amis’ immense talent. It’s a book that will linger long in the reader’s psyche as a testament to both human darkness and our perpetual struggle for light and meaning.
Introduction: An exploration into human evil and resilience
The Zone of Interest (2014) explores the lives of three people under the harsh conditions of a Nazi concentration camp. This brutal narrative, which recently inspired a film adaptation, challenges you to confront the depths of human evil as well as the sparks of resilience in unimaginable circumstances. In it, you’ll encounter a chilling exploration of love, betrayal, and survival set against one of the darkest eras of human history.
In 1949, German philosopher Theodor Adorno stated that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” Indeed, it can be a daunting challenge to address the Holocaust in art. However, this has not deterred writers like Martin Amis. In fact, in The Zone of Interest, he decides to tackle the unspeakable horrors of Auschwitz with unflinching directness.
Set in 1942 within the camp itself, the story dives into the fictional lives of three people entangled in the machinery of the camp – one is the highest ranking Nazi in the camp based on real-life Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss, one a lower level officer, and the other a camp prisoner. We observe the day-to-day existence of all three characters, along with the dynamics and relationships between Nazi officers and the prisoners they control. The whole narrative paints a grim picture of the brutality of camp life, and this Blink does not shy away from the grotesque realities of the camp. So, please be aware that the content is intense and may be distressing.
With that said, let’s dive into the harrowing world of 1942 Poland and explore the stark reality of Auschwitz.
Part 1
Our story begins in the shade of an old maple grove. But it isn’t any maple grove – this one is situated at the edge of a Nazi concentration camp. It’s at the camp’s gates where we meet Golo Thomsen, a liaison officer. Standing guard, he watches as a car rolls through the gates, dust swirling in its wake. Among the newcomers inside is Hannah Doll, wife of the camp’s highest ranking officer, Commandant Paul Doll, as well as their two daughters. Thomsen’s eyes fixate on Hannah – her poise starkly contrasts with the grim surroundings. Indeed, something about the way she moves strikes him, stirring an attraction that’s entirely inappropriate – but that’s what makes it so irresistible.
Later, in the dimly lit confines of the officers’ club, Thomsen confesses his infatuation to his friend, Boris Eltz. Over mugs of bitter ersatz coffee, he describes the paradox of such beauty coming to live in such a place of despair. Despite Boris’s caution about the dangers of his crush, Thomsen just can’t shake it. So, he decides to craft a plan to meet Hannah.
Then, one afternoon, Thomsen seizes the moment – he knows that Commandant Doll will be preoccupied, so he arrives at the Doll family villa situated next to the camp, all under the guise of delivering urgent news from Berlin. Lo and behold, it works; he is granted a private audience with Hannah. Inside, the villa’s walls, adorned with floral wallpaper and draping curtains, contrast sharply to the camp’s brutality just outside. As they converse, Thomsen steers the discussion with subtle flirting, admiring Hannah’s grace and composure. She remains cool, however, and her responses can only be described as polite and measured. Thomsen just can’t figure out how to penetrate her distant nature.
All of a sudden, their exchange is shattered by the unmistakable screams of new prisoners arriving at the camp. The terrible sounds remind both of them of the reality just outside. Then, the music begins to swell – a desperate command from Commandant Doll to mask the chilling screams with a live classical orchestra. This surreal moment leaves Thomsen and Hannah in a heavy silence – they are both profoundly affected by the intrusion.
Our tale shifts to Commandant Doll himself, who is overseeing the arrival of the new transport comprising mostly elderly and child prisoners from France. As he directs the prisoners toward the gas chambers under the pretense of taking showers, there’s a mechanically cold nature to his efficiency. Indeed, his demeanor almost contains a semblance of civility in the very heart of darkness that he inhabits. While watching the prisoners fall for his cruel shower trick, he reflects on the need to be economical. Prisoners who cannot work must be exterminated; there is no way around it. His mind even drifts away for a moment, and he begins to look forward to forcing himself on Hannah later that night. All the while, the camp orchestra continues to play.
Meanwhile, Thomsen, in the aftermath of his encounter with Hannah, leaves the villa haunted by his emotions. The desire he has for Hannah is poisoned by guilt, his conscience tainted by the proximity to the horrors he knows are unfolding in the camp next door. His infatuation remains, however, and he is determined to make contact with Hannah again.
We also meet Szmul, a Jewish prisoner coerced into assisting with the camp’s duties as head of the so-called Sonderkommando, a camp unit composed of inmates assisting in their own destruction. Szmul wrestles with the weight of his moral complicity – he’s caught between the imperative to survive and the guilt of assisting with such evil. Even as he participates in the brutality of the camp, he clings to small rebellions and moments of humanity, cherishing the rare opportunities to alleviate even a tiny portion of the suffering around him.
In one quiet moment, Szmul eases the suffering of a young boy, Witold. Recognizing the boy’s pain from a missing prosthetic boot, Szmul tells him everything will be okay. This, of course, is a lie, but it reassures the boy. Szmul even informs the boy that his friends and brother are safe and waiting for him at a farm. This small act of kindness provides Witold with a moment of comfort in an otherwise unbearable existence.
ANALYSIS
Our story begins in an environment where beauty confronts brutality. Indeed, from the offset, the setting of an ordinary maple grove bordering a concentration camp immediately draws us into a striking moral juxtaposition. This ordinary scene is one typically associated with tranquility, but here, the grove becomes a witness to the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust. This image embodies philosopher Hannah Aredent’s concept of the banality of evil, where ordinary settings and everyday individuals play roles in perpetuating monstrous acts.
This concept is also contained within Thomsen’s attraction to Hannah Doll. His fixation, emerging amidst the backdrop of extreme brutality, demonstrates the rather disturbing normalcy of human emotions even in the most abnormal contexts. This challenges us to consider how deep-seated desires and personal affections can persist – and even flourish – amongst moral chaos.
The facade of normality continues as Thomsen plans a meeting with Hannah, resulting in a tension-filled encounter at the villa. This villa, a symbol of decorum next to the camp’s brutality, along with the classical music used to mask the screams of the prisoners, highlights the chilling ease with which culture and art can be co-opted to maintain a veneer over a grave evil such as the Holocaust. The music, a profound misuse of high culture, thus illustrates how ordinary elements of civilization can be twisted to support or mask barbarity unfolding in plain sight.
Part 2
Continuing with our story, we move back to Thomsen, who is caught in another of Boris Eltz’s long-winded tales. This time, Boris is pondering the enduring perception of French cultural refinement and superiority. It’s ironic, he suggests, that even in their current state of defeat, they are still seen as better than everyone else, including the Germans.
All the while, Thomsen finds his thoughts drifting to his recent exchange of letters with Hannah. Their correspondence, initiated under the pretense of discussing mundane camp logistics, has evolved into a dialogue of subtle flirting. He keeps on going over her words in his head, attempting to decrypt their hidden meaning.
Then, Thomsen’s attention shifts to what’s happening outside the window of Boris’s ground-floor office. This area of the camp is what the officers call “Kalifornia,” a sick reference to the vast sprawl of confiscated possessions that are collected and sorted there. Thomsen’s gaze falls upon Esther, a young prisoner whose defiance is palpable. Boris also begins to watch her, and explains how he has taken her under his wing. He calls her in, commanding her to write a postcard – in other words, propaganda painting the camp as a haven of cleanliness and order. She rebels, and truthfully describes the horrors, calling the authorities “lying murderers.”
Compelled by a mix of fury and protocol, Boris has no choice but to confine her to the punishment bunker – a decision that leaves him visibly torn. Thomsen, observing silently, sees in Boris a man caught between the cruelness of duty and the flashes of humanity that remain inside him.
As night settles over the camp, Commandant Doll is nursing a black eye from an unfortunate incident involving his gardener Bohdan, who accidentally hit him in the face with a spade. He holds a meeting with his officers in which he relays a macabre task that was to be completed: the exhuming and incineration of the remains from the mass graves in the nearby woods. Why, they wonder? He explained that the remains were getting into the local water supply. As he speaks, his voice doesn’t stray from an almost chilling dispassion, with no recognizable emotion – it’s as if he is discussing spoiled goods rather than human remains.
Our story now turns back to Szmul and his unbearable tasks. One of these is the burning of bodies, with each one stripping him further of hope and leaving him a haunted shell amid this seemingly endless cycle of the death camp. Observing Szmul’s efficiency, Doll acknowledges his crematorial skills with a smirk. He even cynically comments on the “charmed life” Szmul gets to live by performing his duties – for now.
Then, one night, Doll drunkenly appears in the crematorium where Szmul is working. He decides to mock Szmul as he works – resistance is futile, he says. He continues by informing Szmul that his fate is already sealed and there is no hope for survival. Szmul, gripping a hammer, is tempted to strike Doll, but ultimately remains paralyzed – his capacity for resistance has been eroded by the relentless trauma he has already endured.
ANALYSIS
In this section, we continue to observe the dehumanization and resistance against a backdrop of systemic evil. For example, take the reference to “Kalifornia,” a place of confiscated possessions – this starkly contrasts with the real California’s imagery of freedom and prosperity. Such a reference highlights the perverse reality within the camp.
Thomsen’s correspondence with Hannah on the other hand can be seen as a symbol of the struggle to maintain personal identity in a genocidal context. Their exchanges, which begin under superficial circumstances, gradually morph into a more personal and charged dialogue. This shift from the mundane to the significant mirrors both characters’ psychological battle against the dehumanizing effects of their environment. Indeed, Thomsen’s attraction to Hannah, and his ongoing obsession over her words, suggest his desperation to maintain a connection with what’s left of normalcy and decency in a context that negates such values.
Meanwhile, Boris’s actions toward Esther, who is not afraid to name the camp’s horrors, illustrate the tension between the coldness of bureaucracy and the necessity to suppress one’s empathy in such a position. This is a prime example of the psychological turmoil involved in working in such an environment. People like Boris are torn between their roles as oppressors and the remnants of their humanity.
However, not all bureaucracy involves suppressed empathy, and we see this with the chilling discussion that Commandant Doll holds about exhuming mass graves for purely practical reasons. This moment confronts us with the disturbing ease with which ordinary administrative actions can facilitate extraordinary atrocities, this of course echoing the broader theme of the moral decay of daily life under totalitarian regimes such as the Nazis.
Part 3
Our story now moves back to Thomsen, who is mulling over the words of yet another letter from Hannah. In it, she voices her concern about her husband’s increasing cruelty – for no good reason, he has her Jewish gardener transferred. Her words seem to cry out for companionship, or perhaps even a risky alliance against her husband. Intrigued and conflicted, Thomsen decides the time has come to finally meet with her.
Commandant Doll, meanwhile, begins to have suspicions over his wife’s behavior. He even has her followed, and it gets reported back to him that she is indeed exchanging letters with someone. Then, as he often does, he proceeds to secretly watch her in the bathroom as she excitedly reads and then destroys a letter from Thomsen. In that moment, his paranoia transforms into dread – she is indeed having an affair, and with each passing day, he begins to view all his wife’s actions through a lens of betrayal.
We then reach the clandestine meeting between Hannah and Thomsen, all under the guise of a routine inspection near the camp’s perimeter fence. Thomsen initially approaches her as casually as possible – after all, he is aware that they are probably being watched. While their interaction starts off with light conversation, it gets darker when Thomsen reveals that the gardener who accidentally injured Doll was transferred to Stutthof, a camp with a grim reputation.
But then, Hannah confesses that it was her, not the gardener, who caused the bruises on her husband’s face. This confession is as cryptic as it is significant – it is the first piece of information that could endanger both of them if it’s overheard. And perhaps even more importantly, it reveals a direct confrontation between her and her husband. Thomsen is taken aback as the plot surrounding his infatuation thickens.
Meanwhile, Szmul continues his harrowing work in assisting with the genocidal crimes of the camp. He reflects on the psychological toll of his role, and the way that the prisoners are constantly mocked by the camp officers. He describes his disgust at how the Star of David adorns the ceiling of the gas chamber, and how the foot rags they are provided are made from Jewish prayer shawls.
Then, thoughts on his present situation lapse into memories of the past. He recounts a story of the ghetto in Łódź, where the inhabitants, upon learning of the impending deportation of the elderly and children, are momentarily distracted by the news of a potato delivery. It is indeed powerful, he reflects, that hunger can override even the most basic human instincts.
We then move back to Commandant Doll and his climax of paranoia. He finally decides to confront his wife about her alleged affair. In a drunken, rambling tirade he accuses her of betrayal and deceit, but Hannah refuses to be cowed by his accusations. Instead, she denies everything, and leaves the room.
Commandant Doll realizes he cannot take any more of this. He decides to summon Szmul to the cellar underneath Crematory IV. He informs Szmul that his wife, Shulamith, will be taken from the Łódź ghetto on May 1st and brought to the camp to be killed. That is, unless Szmul carries out a terrible task: he must murder Doll’s wife on Walpurgis Night, April 30th.
Our story is slowly reaching its end, and we fast forward to September 1948 – the war is over, and Thomsen finally manages to locate Hannah. The two proceed to meet. As they sit together, the conversation turns to what happened on Walpurgis Night. She recounts the chilling moment when she is confronted by Szmul who, forced into an impossible position, attempts to maintain some semblance of dignity by turning the weapon on himself at the last second. But instead, her husband comes out of the shadows and delivers two killing bullets that end Szmul’s life.
It is in this moment that Hannah finally recognizes the bottomless cruelty of her husband and the camp he manages. She flees with her daughters the next morning, leaving behind the ruins of her life with Doll.
As their conversation continues, it’s obvious that Thomsen is seeking some form of closure or even a continuation of their relationship, but Hannah is having none of it. The horrors she witnessed have alienated her from the possibility of romantic attachment, or perhaps even normalcy itself. Thomsen, ever the hopeful romantic, is thus left to grapple with the reality that Hannah may never be able to separate him from the horrors they both escaped. His parting words, a request to maintain some form of contact, are met with a non-committal response from Hannah – she signifies her need to distance herself from the past and perhaps even from Thomsen, who represents a link to those dark times. Their story comes to an end with Thomsen, standing alone with Hannah’s words lingering on his conscience. Despite everything, he can’t shake the feeling that some remnants of the past are worth holding onto, even if only in memory.
Finally, we learn that Commandant Paul Doll had been demoted to a clerical post at the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps in Berlin in 1943. He was then captured in 1946, tried at Nuremberg, and eventually handed over to the Polish authorities. In his final statement, Doll expressed a bitter realization of his grave sins against humanity. He was executed on April 16, 1947, ultimately paying the highest price for his crimes.
ANALYSIS
In the final section of our story, we’ve explored all things betrayal, paranoia, and the breakdown of relationships under totalitarian cruelty. Commandant Doll’s growing suspicion about his wife’s fidelity reflect an even broader theme of distrust that affects all personal interactions within the camp. Indeed, this erosion of trust is emblematic of the broader moral decline that afflicts those living under and enforcing totalitarian rule.
Meanwhile, the secret meeting between Thomsen and Hannah represents a critical turning point in our narrative – it reveals deep layers of personal conflict and resistance. By revealing the direct confrontation with her husband, Hannah shares an important moment of personal agency while also signifying the desperate acts of defiance possible even within such an oppressive environment. Indeed, the fact that she herself inflicted the bruises on Doll’s face shifts the power dynamic significantly – it positions her not as a simple bystander, but as a resistant force within the narrative.
But while she has the ability to escape alive after such a defiant act, the same opportunity is not given to Szmul. His final act of defiance leads to his death. But, in his refusal to further betray his own moral convictions, we see that individuals, even in the most extreme circumstances, can seek to reclaim their humanity. His refusal to toe the line affirms our capacity for resistance in the face of systemic evil.
Conclusion
Golo Thomsen, caught up in his infatuation with Hannah Doll, struggles with both his emotions and ethical dilemmas. As Commandant Doll’s paranoia about his wife’s fidelity continues to escalate, it triggers dire consequences. Meanwhile, Szmul confronts deep moral challenges while seeking small acts of defiance, all in order to preserve his humanity. Their lives all come together, revealing that only tragedy can come out of the horrors of the camp.
Martin Amis was a British novelist known for his unique narrative style and exploring provocative themes. Other notable works include Money: A Suicide Note and London Fields – these cemented his reputation as a critical voice in contemporary literature. Amis’s writing often explored the complexities of modern life coupled with sharp British wit and deep psychological insight.