Overview

One of Britain's finest writers confronts the 'defining moment' of the 21st century. Martin Amis first wrote about September 11 a week later in a piece for The Guardian beginning, 'It was the advent of the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty- that was the defining moment.' He has kept returning to September 11, in essays and reviews, and in two remarkable short stories, 'In the Palace of the End' and 'The Last Days of Muhammad Atta'. All are collected here, together with an expanded account of his travels with Tony Blair in 2007 - to Belfast, to Washington, and to Baghdad and Basra. 'We are arriving at an axiom in long-term thinking about international terrorism,' he writes- 'the real danger lies, not in what it inflicts, but in what it provokes. Thus by far the gravest consequence of September 11, to date, is Iraq... Meanwhile, September 11 continues, it goes on, with all its mystery, its instability, and its terrible dynamism.'

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9780099488699

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Essential reading * Observer * Possibly the most fully engaged writer of our age -- David Aaronovitch * The Times * Trenchant, deeply informed and informative...an important volume * Independent on Sunday * A stylist with the trick of defamiliarising the familiar, he is also a keen student of the public realm...we should prize him - for his engagement as well as his gifts * Guardian * Entertaining, witty, thoughtful and sometimes discomforting * Independent *

Essential reading Observer Possibly the most fully engaged writer of our age -- David Aaronovitch The Times Trenchant, deeply informed and informative...an important volume Independent on Sunday A stylist with the trick of defamiliarising the familiar, he is also a keen student of the public realm...we should prize him - for his engagement as well as his gifts Guardian Entertaining, witty, thoughtful and sometimes discomforting Independent

[Amis is a] writer who is arguably the most gifted stylist of his generation, and who may be genetically incapable of a dull sentence . . . The Second Plane and the furor surrounding its inception represent the debate an open and confident society should be willing to sustain about such fundamental, if difficult, matters. - Toronto Star<br> <br> The Second Plane is an essential snapshot of a moment in time, of private reactions to a world in transition set against a collective anger and despair. - Edmonton Journal<br> <br> Novelist Martin Amis's bent for punchy sentences and reason-as-the-only-fit-yardstick geopolitical analysis both surface early in this provocative collection of non-fiction essays, reviews and short stories. . . . Tough, and controversial, stances abound in The Second Plane. . . . Amis's command of language is a joy to read. - Winnipeg Free Press <br> The great value of this book is that it does not permit us the armchair luxury of relativizing or compartmentalizing the War on Terror. By shifting the stage from the local to the global and raising the bar from the actual to the potential, Amis holds both sides to the same standards. - The Gazette <br> Amis is a highly intuitive writer. . . . The views Amis presents are worth reading for their wit, their vibrant phrasing, their ring of conviction. - National Post <br> [V]erbal thrill . . .[Amis's] writing remains capable of anything - The Observer<br> <br> What Amis [has] really done, as the chronologically ordered pieces in this collection demonstrate, was to go on a political journey. . . . [P]ossibly the most fully engaged writer of our age. - The Times<br> <br> Amis is famously audacious, sardonic, andexcoriating. But in this bracing and corrective collection of intense and perceptive responses to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 . . . Amis is doing far more than performing literary pyrotechnics or playing provocateur. . . . [He] writes with vehemence, daring, and verve because he schools himself in harsh truths, and because he cares. - Booklist <p> From the Hardcover edition.

Entertaining, witty, thoughtful and sometimes discomforting * Independent * A stylist with the trick of defamiliarising the familiar, he is also a keen student of the public realm...we should prize him - for his engagement as well as his gifts * Guardian * Trenchant, deeply informed and informative...an important volume * Independent on Sunday * Possibly the most fully engaged writer of our age -- David Aaronovitch * The Times * Essential reading * Observer *

Author Information

Martin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century - in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience - he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023.

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