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House of Meetings by Martin Amis
House of Meetings is narrated by a man in 2004 who tells his story and that of his brother and the woman they both loved. The narrator was a Russian soldier during World War II, raping his way across Eastern Europe. He tells this information as the way it was then. His brother, Lev, was an idealistic poet, and they both fell in love with a Jewish woman named Zoya, although her nickname was "The Americas" because she was shaped like the continents. Zoya chooses Lev for a husband. The brothers get caught up the Stalinist purges and are sent to a Siberian gulag. The prisoners' wives travel great distances for conjugal visits, which take place in the house of meetings. When Zoya comes to visit Lev, he emerges a lesser man. The mystery of what happened there is the key to the narrator's story. Martin Amis' novel has received mixed reviews with the London Times saying, "House of Meetings is unmistakably Amis's best novel since London Fields."
