The Second Plane: September 11: 2001-2007 (From Around the World), Paperback Book, By: Amis, Martin

September 11 shook Martin Amis in a very personal way: beyond the unanimous horror and disbelief, the novelist felt confronted with a reality that surpassed fiction, and the humanist with an event that defied reason. . Very early on, and on numerous occasions, he wrote articles and essays aimed at giving meaning and form to this trauma and its consequences - including the Iraq war. Hot analyses, book reviews, funny long report in which he accompanies Tony Blair to Baghdad: it is these texts, readily controversial and passionately rational, which are brought together here. Martin Amis slays down extremism, all extremisms, with the same ruthless rigor that he used to dissect Nazism or Stalinism in the past. And even if the we do not share all his analyses and positions, we can only admire his acuteness and his eloquence. The collection culminates with two short stories, one evoking an authentic terrorist of September 11, the other the double of a hardly imaginary dictator: the author reaffirms, with brilliance, all the power of the fiction, and the the writer's power to help us think about the real.