Martin Amis
La zona d'interesse

On the Holocaust, the Nazi concentration camps, the Third Reich, that gravely mentally ill leader that was the führer and the equally mentally ill or cowardly individuals who adhered to his ideas, thousands of books have been written, including historical reconstructions, essays, and novels. Personally, I haven't read much about all of this, but I have read some things, and not only read but also watched documentaries, films, newspaper articles, or television discussions over the course of my sixty-three years. And every time the topic comes up, I feel bad thinking about what happened (this has been the case since I was a child, even though I did not really know the extent and totality of the events then, and to be honest, I still don’t know entirely now, just some things…) during that time, which then led to World War II.

I'll be brief; I started this book (which I had downloaded on my Kindle some time ago) without knowing precisely what it contained, mainly because I really like how Martin Louis Amis writes. I had read a handful of his books several years ago, and this one from 2014 is the last of his translations in Italian. Then another came out in 2020 titled "Inside Story," an autobiographical novel (but I don't think the Italian version is available yet). Back to the point, when I started it, it seemed like an intriguing story happening between an officer and the wife of his commander, written in Amis’s usual unique style. Just to get a better idea, I searched for more information online, and that's when I realized the true content beyond the romanticized semi love story. The zone of interest mentioned in the book is nothing but a real concentration camp where the inmates suffer the unthinkable, both from the Nazis and from the inmates themselves forced into inhumane and dehumanizing tasks. The whole is narrated in the first person by three voices: the aforementioned officer Angelus Thomsen, the camp commander Paul Doll (husband of Hannah Doll, who the officer falls in love with), and Szmul Zacharias, the Sonderkommando, a Jew responsible for overseeing other inmates, including women, children, and the elderly, from their arrival to their fate for better (little) or worse (infinite).

I won't even mention the plot because you can find it anywhere (just search for it). I'll just say that before writing this book, Amis documented himself quite a lot and for several years. Inside, there's a bit of everything, even things from Primo Levi, to name just one. For me, in the few days I read it, it packed, as usual, a nasty punch in the stomach regarding what it narrates, so much so that it accompanied my thoughts before falling asleep or during the day while I wasn't reading it, and that's all.

N.B. Among the genres (in which this book appears and that DeBasio does not include) I see: Novel, Romance Novel, Historical Fiction, Psychological Fiction.