Awards
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Synopses & Reviews
In
Time's Arrow the doctor Tod T. Friendly dies and then feels markedly better, breaks up with his lovers as a prelude to seducing them, and mangles his patients before he sends them home. And all the while Tod's life races backward toward the one appalling moment in modern history when such reversals make sense.
"The narrative moves with irresistible momentum.... [Amis is] a daring, exacting writer willing to defy the odds in pursuit of his art."--Newsday
Review
"The narrative moves with irresistible momentum.... [Amis is] a daring, exacting writer willing to defy the odds in pursuit of his art." Newsday
Review
"Remarkable...Amis is a writer of wit...a book rich in poignancy and savage indignation." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"A devastating specific portrait of the Nazis' warped mentality...a virtousic...performance." The New York Times
Review
"Splendid...bold...Time's Arrow is Martin Amis's most thrilling book...gripping from start to finish." Lost Angeles Times Book Review
Review
"Prodigious cleverness...a brilliant book." Vogue
Review
"Audacious, utterly poised and almost moving...the book's devastatingly sustained black irony stands comparison with Swift's A Modest Proposal. It is...Amis's finest achievement to date." Financial Times
Synopsis
In Time's Arrow the doctor Tod T. Friendly dies and then feels markedly better, breaks up with his lovers as a prelude to seducing them, and mangles his patients before he sends them home. And all the while Tod's life races backward toward the one appalling moment in modern history when such reversals make sense.
Synopsis
In this icy, knife's-edge story of a life that progresses backward through time, unfolding into one of the darkest episodes of the 20th century, Amis ("at his intriguing, heedful, and powerful best" --Time Out), finds a chillingly original approach to the Holocaust in fiction - From the acclaimed author of Zone of Interest "The narrative moves with irresistible momentum.... Amis is] a daring, exacting writer willing to defy the odds in pursuit of his art." --Newsday
Tod. T. Friendly is living his life in reverse. Doctor Friendly has just died, but he moves "out of blackest sleep" to find himself surrounded by doctors and on the deathbed of a man in whose body he is imprisoned. After weeks of improving in the hospital, he is sent home to his affable, melting-pot, primary-colors existence in suburban America.
As Friendly breaks up with his lovers in a prelude to seducing them and mangles his patients before he sends them home, his life races backward toward the one appalling moment in modern history when such reversals make sense. From the fresh-cut lawns of his retirement to the hustle of New York, and then back to the boat which reverses his course to the war-torn Europe Friendly came from, Amis brings the steeliest nerve to the job of realizing the novel's inevitable logic. Trapped in his body from grave to cradle, Friendly's consciousness can only watch as he struggles to make sense of the good doctor's most ambitious project yet--the final solution.
About the Author
Martin Amis is the best-selling author of several books, including London Fields, Money, The Information, and, most recently, Experience. He lives in London.