House of Meetings - Softcover

Amis, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009948868X ISBN 13: 9780099488682

Publisher: Vintage, 2007

Synopsis

There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would travel continental distances, over weeks and months, in the hope of spending a night, with their particular enemy of the people, in the House of Meetings. The consequences of these liaisons were almost invariably tragic.

House of Meetings is about one such liaison. It is a triangular romance: two brothers fall in love with the same girl, a nineteen-year-old Jewess, in Moscow, which is poised for pogrom in the gap between the war and the death of Stalin. Both brothers are arrested, and their rivalry slowly complicates itself over a decade in the slave camp above the Arctic Circle.

About this title

Review:

"This novella is the best thing Martin Amis has done in fiction for years: very complex, very forceful, startling in the amount of ground it covers, and densely and intelligently put together" (Sam Leith Literary Review)

"An ambitious feat...the result is brilliant" (Catherine Merridale Independent)

"It is difficult not to be impressed by this compact tour de force... Amis has produced a memorable novel and a memorable protagonist" (Toby Lichtig Observer)

"A singular, unimpeachable triumph" (The Economist)

"Unmistakably Amis's best novel since London Fields...a slender, moving novel, streaked with dark comedy" (Robert MacFarlane Sunday Times)

From the Publisher:

Bound to be a major literary event, Martin Amis's new novella is both pertinent and provocative.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 009948868X
• ISBN 13: 9780099488682
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208