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Time's ArrowTime's ArrowMartin Amis
 

Time's Arrow

by Martin Amis

Amis attempts here to write a path into and through the inverted morality of the Nazis: how can a writer tell about something that's fundamentally unspeakable? Amis' solution is a deft literary conceit of narrative inversion. He puts two separate consciousnesses into the person of one man, ex-Nazi doctor Tod T. Friendly. One identity wakes at the moment of Friendly's death and runs... (read more)

Top tags: fiction,  literature,  historical fiction,  experimental,  british (all tags)

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Amazon Reviews (5)
 

Most Helpful Reviews

Liked It

JPandYasmine
  • Rated 5 stars

“JP: This is a formally startling book - the story of a person's life written in reverse time. The conceit is so superbly exectuted you'll find your thoughts running backwards for a while after reading it. THe fact that the person in question is a German doctor who collaborated in the Nazi death camps and dies, incognito, in South America, makes this more than a formally ambitious work. I've heard that with this book Amis was somehow trying to seek absolution for what has been called the...”

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Didn’t Like It

Melanie G
  • Rated 2 stars

“The gimmick in this book is incredibly entertaining, and I liked it until I realized where the author was going with it. I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that the serious subject matter is dealt with in too frivolous a way for my taste.”

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Community:
  • Rated 3.730769 stars
Amazon:
  • Rated 4 stars
  

Newest Comments

  • Laura and Eric

    laura and eric said:

    “What starts out as the ‘hook’ of Time’s Arrow – the conceit that you would have to reverse the flow of time in order to make sense of the atrocities of the Holocaust - develops into something more: a chance for an extended mediation on the journey from innocence to experience, the accumulation of guilt and narrowing of options, and the nature of time and the human condition.

    Recently books that do not fit the traditional definition of science fiction whose main focus is the re-ordering of time are beginning to become a bit of a genre in its own right on my bookshelf. I recently discovered Ilse Aichinger’s short story the “Mirror Story” (German: “Spiegelgeschichte”) in a compendium of German dual-language shorts. Mirror Story contains a similar reversal of cause and effect that requires us lovers to say farewell before they can meet, and perhaps because of the short story format brings some of the main themes of this conceit into sharper relief. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger used science fiction to explore the way we experience linear time non-linearly within the narratives of our lives. And the list goes on (I’m still not through cataloging my library… perhaps I’ll have to come up with a new genre tag and develop a comprehensive list.)

    While these are very different books, of widely differing styles, I really find myself enjoying this ‘genre’ and coming back for re-reading. I think there is something inherently fascinating about the forced perspective the flow of time imposes on our experience of reality, and that interiority of fiction makes it the only medium to challenge that perspective. However, I’ll admit that I just came off of a phase of being a bit obsessed with both fiction and non-fiction books about the nature of time, so perhaps later re-reads might change my opinion. Or maybe my fascination is just part of a larger post-Einstein zeitgeist… the Physics section of my bookshelf is groaning under the weight of recently published books speculating on the nature of time and motion, and surely they aren’t publishing all of those books just for me?”

    posted Wednesday, June 11 2008
  • Oana V

    oana v said:

    “completely fascinated about it!!it really makes you wish never let it till you read all!!”

    posted Thursday, November 1 2007
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