Time's arrow, or, The nature of the offence - Hardcover

AMIS, Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224030930 ISBN 13: 9780224030939

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 1991

Synopsis

The story of a life lived backwards in time. Its narrator, trapped and hurtling towards a terrible secret, moves "out of the blackest sleep" to find himself surrounded by doctors and on the deathbed of a man in whose body he is imprisoned. The novel was shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

In this story told backwards, the life of Nazi war criminal, Doctor Tod T. Friendly is told from end to beginning. The doctor 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.

Escaping from the body of the dying doctor who had worked in Nazi concentration camps, the doctor's consciousness begins living the doctor's life backwards, aware only that he is living the life of a horrible man at a horrible place in time.

From the Back Cover:

“Amis’s backwards world is rigorously imagined. It is a world of pathos and cruel hilarity…but the crux, the test of his vision, is what he does with Auschwitz.” -- Guardian

“Extraordinary…Ironic inversion is essentially a comic device, but its trickery here yields results that are rigorously grave.” -- Independent on Sunday

“Amis’s most daring and ambitious novel.” -- Daily Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0224030930
• ISBN 13: 9780224030939
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176