For the Bojack Horseman episode, see "Time's Arrow".
They're always looking forward to going places they're just coming back from, or regretting doing things they haven't yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye.
A novel by Martin Amis, told entirely in reverse chronological order so that the dialogue and actions by the main characters are all reversed, much like watching a film play backwards (or rewinding itself).
The story follows a Nazi war criminal, a doctor who worked at Auschwitz. The tale begins at 'the moment' of his death and then throughout his entire life through his early childhood. He goes through several identity changes whilst coping with the consequences of his 'past' actions.
Some humour comes through from the Narrator (who is very disconnected from the physical character of the Doctor) being unable to understand that the time is running backwards and misinterpreting those events- but this novel was intended as a commentary on the reversal of human nature put into place the Nazi's policies.
This novel provides examples of:
- Back to Front: The entire narrative is like this, although the narrator doesn't seem to understand that. Conversations are also told in reverse. Consequently, when the Doctor (post-war) is, as one example, being a decent doctor to a battered wife the narrator thinks he's adding bruises and injuries to a woman who then goes home and has her face restored to health by a skillful blow from her husband. This comes to a head in Auschwitz, which the narrator sees as a miraculous place that creates bodies in the ovens, gives them the breath of life in the gas chambers, nurtures them from their initial state of traumatised emaciation into physical and mental health, then puts their hair on, gives them personalised clothes and possessions, removes the serial number they have tattooed on their skin and sends them out into the world as healthy individuals.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Odilo, the Nazi doctor, seems to have an Oedipus complex.
- Failing a Taxi: Mocked when the narrator notes that taxis in New York are so efficient people stand on the street for hours saluting their services when the reverse is true.
- Mad Doctor: Uncle Pepi, an Expy of Josef Mengele is depicted doing all the atrocities of his real-life counterpart, but between the affectionate name and the reversed perspective that makes it seem like he's curing people of horrific injuries and sending them out healthy, the narrator thinks he's a kindly miracle worker.
- Unreliable Narrator: The narrator is a 'secondary consciousness' who existed when the main character was born and rewinds through his whole life
- Those Wacky Nazis: The narrator only finds out about the Doctor's life as a Nazi after it's already seen decades of the Doctor's "early" life pass, and the inverted perspective makes it think the Nazis are creating and healing people rather than killing and harming them, and remains completely oblivious to the evil its witnessing.
