"The Zone of Interest records the greatest phraselet in the English language." Vincenzo Barney
My Martin AmisShow Notes
Vincenzo Barney travelled all the way from Massachusetts to join a panel of eight speakers at the My Martin Amis LIVE show in March this year. If you haven't listened to it already, do go back and hit play.
Since then, Vincenzo has had business on the continent, though he could not return home without first visiting Jack in South London to discuss the book he considers Amis's greatest achievement, The Zone of Interest.
Published in 2014, The Zone of Interest is Amis's fourteenth novel. The story is set in Auschwitz, where a Nazi officer falls in love with the wife of a camp commandant. Told through three narrators: Angelus Thomsen, the officer; Paul Doll, the commandant; and Szmul Zacharias, a Jewish Sonderkommando, its "compendium of epiphanies, appalled asides, anecdotes, and radically condensed history", according to the writer Joyce Carol Oates, makes it arguably one Amis's most compelling works. Upon publication, many called The Zone of Interest Amis's best novel in 25 years.
As well as diving into the widely-praised film adaptation, Vincenzo describes Amis's influence on him as a 29 year-old writer. On the subject of American literary culture more generally, he describes a "suspicion of melody" that he believes harms immersive enjoyment of fiction across the pond.
Listen out in particular for the moment where Vincenzo refers to a phrase Amis uses in The Zone of Interest, which he says he will likely spend the rest of his days trying to match.
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