A brilliant project, but somewhat of a better idea than read, though still compelling enough. The original idea is to retell the main character's life story backwards from old age to birth. Movements are backwards, interactions are backwards, even conversations are backwards - it sometimes requires a fair bit of effort to picture exactly what is happening. The main character is also a former Nazi involved in the work and death camps.
Something about the recounting of events backwards makes them all the more creepy and horrific. For example, exhuming corpses, bringing them back to life and restoring them to their homes. In some way, it rehumanizes all these small horrors. The narrator (a person or voice living inside the narrator's head) constantly refers to the amazing power of creativity in the universe - all the humans dug up from the earth, pulled in from the smoke in the air, brought to life in the gas chamber on the back of a van. The astounding ability of a foot to create an ant by simply lifting itself from the ground. Somehow this again underlines the incredible destructive force of Nazis in particular but also of humans in general.
In recounting the human interactions backwards, especially those focused on women, you also get a sense of the violent emotional swings that run through troubled relationships.
An incredible feat of imagination on Amis' part.
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