Time's ArrowIn 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. |
Contents
You have to be cruel to be kind | |
Because I am a healer everything I do heals | |
You do what you do best not whats best to | |
Here there is no | |
Multiply zero by zero and you still get zero | |
She loves me she loves me | |
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Common terms and phrases
Ahnenerbe anyway Asbo Auschwitz baby bathroom black boots Bustos called camp chest Christopher Hitchens clothes comes course dark doctors dream everything eyes face Father Duryea feel fire garden German girl hair Hamilton Hamilton de Souza hands happen head heal Herta hospital human impotent Irene Jews John Young John's kind Kingsley Amis Kreditor letters living London Fields look Martin Amis morning mother move never night numbers nurses Odilo Unverdorben okay pants patients perfecto phenol pink pretty Rosa Schloss Hartheim Schutzstaffel secret seems sense shit shout sleep smell smile Solingen sometimes soon souls Sprinkleroom staring started street stuff Superette talk tell There's thing thought TIME'S ARROW Tod Friendly Tod's toilet trash Treblinka turns Uncle Pepi Vistula waiting walk weeping Wellport white coat Witney woman women wrong