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, Martin Amis (“at his intriguing, heedful, and powerful best” —Time Out) finds a chillingly original approach to the Holocaust in fiction. The narrative moves with irresistible momentum as Tod. T. Friendly, a doctor who has just died, wakes up to find himself surrounded by doctors 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 sending 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 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.

Read more about Time’s Arrow, Vintage International, ISBN-13: 978-0679735724, published September 29, 1992. The book is a gripping exploration of human existence and the horrors of history through the unique perspective of a man living his life in reverse.