000			01722nam a2200217 a 4500
001			022441
005			20231009192500.0
008			120229s1991 nyu 000 1 eng
010			_a91004144
020			_a9780517585153
050	0	0	_aPR6051.M5 _bT5 1991
100	1		_aAmis, Martin
245	1	0	_aTime's arrow, or, The nature of the offense _c/ Martin Amis
250			_a1st American ed.
260			_aNew York _b: Harmony Books _c, c1991.
300			_a168 p. _c; 22 cm.
520			_aIn this swift, incisive little book, Amis succeeds in rendering the shock of the Holocaust wholly new by traveling backward in time. At the end of his life, the German-born American doctor Tod T. Friendly suffers a paralysis from which emerges "the soul he should have had.'' This innocent soul follows "time's arrow'' back through Tod's stay in America and his flight to Germany, finally arriving at the concentration camp where Friendly, as Odilo Unverdorben, served as a doctor of death. Trying to discover "when the world is going to make sense,'' the confused if patient soul watches as the doctor injures the healed, revives Jews who have been gassed, and grows closer to his estranged wife. It concludes, "We all know by now that violence creates, here on earth . . . it heals and mends.'' Amis's device, which at first seems merely a clever conceit, is handled so skillfully that living backwards becomes not only natural but a perfect metaphor for the Nazis' perverted logic. If he can't finally probe to the bottom of a mind that embraces atrocities, Amis has nevertheless written a thought-provoking, compelling book.
650		0	_aHolocaust, Jewish, 1939-1945 _x--Fiction
655		4	_aFantasy fiction
942			_cMO
999			_c238635 _d238635