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September 11: Terror and Boredom
by Martin Amis
A master not only of fiction but also of fiercely controversial political engagement, Martin Amis here gathers fourteen pieces that constitute an evolving, provocative, and insightful examination of the most momentous event of our time.
At the heart of this collection is the long essay “Terror and Boredom,” an unsparing analysis of Islamic fundamentalism and the West’s flummoxed response to it, while other pieces address the invasion of Iraq, the realities of Iran, and Tony Blair’s lingering departure from Downing Street (and also his trips to Washington and Iraq). Amis’s reviews of pertinent books and films, from The Looming Tower to United 93, provide a far-ranging survey of other responses to these calamitous issues, which are further explored in two short stories: “The Last Days of Muhammed Atta,” its subject self-evident, and “In the Palace of the End,” narrated by a Middle Eastern tyrant’s double whose duties include epic lovemaking, grotesque torture, and the duplication on his own body of the injuries sustained by his alter ego in constant assassination attempts.
Whether lambasted for his refusal to kowtow to Muslim pieties or hailed for his common sense, wide reading, and astute perspective, Amis is indisputably a great pleasure to read—informed, elegant, surprising—and this collection a resounding contemplation of the relentless, manifold dangers we suddenly find ourselves living with.
"[The Second Plane] fires a welcome, left-tending salvo…Amis proves eminently readable, his observations enlightening." - Kirkus Reviews.
"In this bracing and corrective collection of intense and perceptive responses to the terrorist attacks of 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.
"[Amis's] prose is subtle, elegant and witty – and certainly never boring." - Publishers Weekly.
"'He was quite unable,' Amis writes of Blair, 'to find weight of voice, to find decorum, the appropriate words for the appropriate mood.' In placing these pieces side by side, shifting as they do from apocalyptic solemnity to cultural in-joking, Amis sometimes invites against himself the same censure. His writing remains capable of anything, except perhaps humility." - The Guardian.
"Fear and anger have radicalised Amis. He needs to rethink before he completely transforms into one of his own vivid stereotypes." - The Daily Telegraph.
"This pretentious, formalistic argument underscores Mr. Amis’s efforts to deal with a vast historic tragedy with preening, self-consciously literary musings — the same sort of musings that made parts of his 2002 book on Stalin, “Koba the Dread,” so enraging to read." - The New York Times.
This information about The Second Plane was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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Photo: Isabel Fonseca
Martin Amis was the author of fourteen novels, two collections of stories and eight works of non-fiction. His novel Time's Arrow was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for which his subsequent novel Yellow Dog was also longlisted, and his memoir Experience won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest writers since 1945. Amis died in May 2023.
Name Pronunciation
Martin Amis: AIM-is
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