The Second Plane

Oct 22, 2024 12:27 AM

Author:Martin Amis

The Second Plane

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.'

Reviews

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

The main lesson of this entertaining trawl through history-as-dressing-up is that living the way we used to is not much better

—— Times Literary Supplement

Hugely enjoyable... Whether he's firing cannons, battling Gauls or forgetting how to get into his codpiece, moore is always entertaining, and this book is laugh-out-loud funny and genuinely educational

—— The Gloss

A witty, inventive and engaging book

—— Waterstones Books Quarterly

The tone is light and Moore a delightful writer

—— London Lite

A live and amusing... interesting and entertaining read

—— TNT Magazine

The author of Suite Francaise had a life as dramatic and as tragic as her fiction

—— Telegraph Review

A fascinating biography

—— Lesley McDowell , Herald

This book is excellent

—— Andrew Holgate , Sunday Times

This dramatic biography recreates her tragic life and the turbulent times in which she lived...Nemirovsky is one of those rare writers whose life is every bit as interesting as her work

—— Simon Shaw , Mail on Sunday

This is a scholarly biography of a literary paragon... It is saturated with her writings, revealing her passions, hubris, moods and anxieties, as well as her thoughts of fiction, Jewishness and mothers... Russian social history, anti-Semitism and the Vichy regime's collusion with the Nazis are handled adroitly

—— Maggie Armstrong , Irish Times

a terrifically entertaining read

—— Carla McKay , Daily Mail

extremely diverting, essentially kind-hearted and well written

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

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