The Second Plane: September 11: 2001-2007 (2008) is Martin Amis’s most controversial book. It is the latest of his engagements with large modern traumas: the first, in the short-story collection Einstein’s Monsters (1987), was with the threat of nuclear weapons; the second, in the novel Time’s Arrow (1991), with the Shoah; the third, in the nonfictional Koba the Dread (2002), with Stalinism; and the fourth, in The Second Plane, with “September 11” – Amis prefers this formulation to “9/11” – and with what he calls “Islamism”. The book consists of fourteen pieces, twelve essays and reviews and two short stories, presented in the chronological order of composition. They were originally published in national newspapers or magazines: six in the Times, four in the Guardian, one in The Observer, one in the New York Times and...
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Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "The Second Plane: September 11, 2001-2007". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 January 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23520, accessed 09 June 2026.]
