The Zone of Interest

Angelus Thomsen works at Auschwitz, dividing his attention between the demands of his post and an intimate fixation. Thomsen moves through a world of bureaucratic meetings, garden parties, and marital rivalries, all conducted in the shadow of industrialised murder. The machinery of the war operates with chilling efficiency, yet the men who oversee it concern themselves with promotion, jealousy, and reputation. Through Thomsen, Commandant Paul Doll and those around them, The Zone of Interest exposes the moral evasions and self-justifications that allow atrocity to coexist with ordinary ambition. By placing its focus not on victims but on perpetrators and bystanders, The Zone of Interest confronts the reader with the unsettling proximity between civility and cruelty, forcing a reckoning with complicity, desire, and the banality of evil inside the Holocaust. ‘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.’ Sunday Times