Time’s Arrow

Title: Time’s Arrow

Author: Martin Amis

Publisher: Jonathan Cape

Place: England

Date: 1991

 

Time’s Arrow is a novel about life of German Holocaust doctor in a reverse chronology. His name is Tod Friendly and that is the pseudonym he accepts for Odilo Undverdorben after coming to America.  He left his wife and a child in Germany, escaped Europe after the war and succeeded in settling in America, with assistance of Reverand Nicholas Kreditor who assists war criminals in hiding. In 1948 he travels (in reverse) to Portugal , from where he makes his way to Auschwitz. The doctor Odilo Unverdorben assists in killing and torturing Jews. While at Auschwitz the reverse chronology means that he creates life and heals the sick, rather than the opposite. In reversed version of reality, reversed people become younger, and eventually become children, than babies, and re-enter their mothers’ womb, where they finally cease to exist but so in morality.

For further information see:
http://www.un.org//holocaustremembrance/ index.shtml
http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/holocaust-fiction
http://library.jccc.edu/guides/literature/holocaust.htm