In France, the storied house Gallimard declined to publish the novel because “it wasn’t very convincing,” said Marie-Pierre Gracedieu....Here's the book, "The Zone of Interest." See for yourself... unless you think we're being played by a publicity stunt.
Mr. Amis said his German publisher, Carl Hanser Verlag, had told him that there were “inconsistencies in the plot” and that it had found the main character, Golo Thomsen, an SS officer, too sympathetic to the Nazi cause...
Piero Salabè, Mr. Amis’s editor at Carl Hanser Verlag, said... “Our decision was based on the book’s contents as well as on economic considerations... [It had] nothing to do with the Holocaust being a sensitive issue in Germany.”....
“The problem with the novel lies in his uninhibited English perception of humor, at least for some German readers,” [wrote the London correspondentfor Allgemeine Zeitung].
September 16, 2014
Martin Amis sets his novel in a Nazi concentration camp and his European publishers reject it.
They don't get the Englishman's humor or they think he might be construed as sympathetic to the Nazis or they're squeamish and scared or... it's just not that good.
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Snip: "In France, they say they’re puzzled by the humor."
The French only laugh at what their teutonic masters allow them to laugh at.
They don't get the Englishman's humor...
Suggested title: "Life Is Dutiful"
It's a confusion of Verlag and Stalag.
"She was coming back from the Old Town with her two daughters..."
No antecedent for "she" = idiot author style.
Hell, if I slogged my way through The Tin Drum the least the Krauts can do is have a crack a Martin Amis.
I just finished "The Second Plane" by Amis. It's a collection of his essays relating to 9/11 through the year 2007. He had quite a few interesting things to say, and he's a clever and lively writer.
Good writers can produce bad books. But this is definitely a good writer.
His father was a very good writer. And as Forest Gump says, "that's all I'm gonna say about that."
Thought experiment. If the English of today (2014) were running a Nazi concentration camp - how would they act? If you want to know the answer read this book. (For 10 bonus points: How does this book also explain why Scotland wants to leave the UK?)
Or
you could walk through a dirty puddle and then chew and swallow your shoestrings. The same effect would take less time.
Or
The English welfare state has disinherited the English poor and some on the left are trying to confront the disaster without criticizing the left. This is in that line - also The Meritocracy by Michael Young, Steig Larssen and JK Rowling in The Casual Vacancy. Sordid, dull and hopeless.
The Germans seem to have dealt fairly well with their Nazi guilt. Perhaps the work is not as good as some think, or perhaps it doesn't really translate to the German psyche. It will be published in Germany; maybe it's just business.
I wonder, will this be the last book to receive "Acclaim from the United Kingdom".
hell the English invented concentration camps..what's the problem?
anyway, I liked Kingsley Amis. Is this Martin guy any good?
They may see parallels.
He could self-publish and be up on Amazon in week, and he'd make more money with something like an 80% commission (but no upfront advance), but people like Martin Amis desire the prestige of institutions such as old-line publishing houses, for some reason.
Some people just have no sense of humor about the Holocaust.
Martin Amis's fiction has been uneven, more so since he's gone away from his original schtick of young man on the make humor like The Rachel Papers, Money, one or two more. Then he started writing about the crimes of the Soviet Union, etcetera, seeking to make heavy statements -- he's just seemed to be punching above his weight.
Merde!
The Drudge Report recently had a link to a picture of a Jewish family arriving at a concentration camp somewhat looking with their possessions like they were worried about not making the train. Also accompanying this, Drudge or Der Spiegel had linked a story about how prosecutions were frustrated in the 70s. People talk about closure with prosecutions, and there might have been. The murder of Jewish civilians, confiscation of their property to support the German state, is a horror that the author may be trying to deal with but it is never going to go away.
Angela Merkel's stand against those who would delegitimize a European saying something on behalf of Israel as the leader of Germany is a voice of an angel in Hell. A prophetic name she has.
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