Martin Amis's holocaust 'comedy' fails to find German publisher

The Zone of Interest, set in Auschwitz, is declined by the author's publishers in Germany and France, although alternative French house picks up novel

In the UK, some critics have hailed it as the "best book in 25 years" by one of Britain's greatest living writers. But The Zone of Interest, Martin Amis's "brutish comedy" set in a fictionalised Auschwitz, may struggle to find readers overseas after the author confirmed on Thursday that both his German and French publishers had declined to publish the novel.

The book, which is narrated from the points of view of three concentration camp commanders and is interspersed with German vocabulary, was officially rejected by German publisher Hanser on the grounds that the manuscript wasn't "sufficiently convincing", Amis told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. But his interviewer, Thomas David, wrote that in German literary circles the widely shared view was that Amis's book had been "too frivolous" for Hanser.

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