Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm honored to have as my guest, Martin Amos, whose new book, House of Meetings,

has been published by Knopf.

This is the fifth time he's been on Bookworm.

His earlier novels, again with

the Rachel Papers, most recently Yellow Dog, well known for what has become a contemporary classic,

London Fields. And this novel opens really new ground and is, to my mind, the most painful book you've written,

and must have been very painful to write as well.

Yeah, I mean, usually that isn't the case and you can have

quite a good time with painful stuff

while taking on board

the seriousness of what you're writing

when I wrote my short novel about the Holocaust Times Arrow,

I was writing from the point of view of a perpetrator. This was my link with those events.

You know, a fellow Aryan. I was writing about a Nazi doctor. And that was reasonably frictionless for me.

But writing about a victim is something else entirely.

And I suffered a great deal while writing it.

...