In his fourteenth novel,

(2014), Martin Amis returns to the dark enormity he tackled in his seventh,

(1991): the Holocaust. The most striking feature of that earlier novel was its technique of reverse narration, from grave to cradle, which powerfully conveyed the sense of the Shoah as “wrong in time” (73), an ethical outrage so great that it upset the natural human sense of temporality. This novel is more straightforward in its temporal progression and set within a more limited time frame. The main action runs from August 1942 to 30 April 1943, though with references back to key stages on the road to fascism, such as the Nazi electoral victory on 14 September 1930; the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933; the passing of the Nuremberg Race Laws on 15…

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Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "The Zone of Interest". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 September 2014; last revised 12 April 2024. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35510, accessed 26 November 2024.]