Windows on the World
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A daring, moving fictional account of the last moments of a father and his two sons atop the World Trade Centre on September 11.
‘The only way to know what took place in the restaurant on the 107th Floor of the North Tower, World Trade Center on September 11th 2001 is to invent it.'
Weaving together fact and fiction, empathy and dark humour, autobiography and intellect, ‘Windows on the World’ dares to confront the terrifying image that has come to define our world, the image onto which we project our fears, our compassion, our anger, our incomprehension.
Beigbeder is a fierce, furious, infuriating chronicler of human iniquity and human suffering, and this book is a controversial, yet surprisingly humane attempt to depict the most awful event of recent memory.
Reviews
‘Powerful…the combination of banality and panic is quietly devastating. Affecting and disconcerting’ Financial Times
‘Beigbeder has set himself a mammoth task. Foreknowledge of the outcome removes any narrative tension and reality has outstripped fiction. Given these constraints, the author is remarkably successful.’ Sunday Express
'Beigbeder's gripping apocalyptic novel…it is, on all levels, a stunning read.' Publisher's Weekly
'Beigbeder brings this off thanks to his electrifying intelligence and vaulting leaps of sympathy with all the victims – in the tower, the planes, and the unjust world beyond New York.’ Independent
About the author
Frederic Beigbeder was born in 1965 and lives in Paris. He works as a publisher, literary critic and broadcaster.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"You know how it ends: everybody dies." Thus begins Beigbeder's gripping apocalyptic novel, which takes place on September 11, 2001 the date on which New York realtor Carthew Yorston has taken his seven- and nine-year-old sons for a long-promised breakfast at the eponymous eatery atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Alternating with Smith's narration is the voice of Beigbeder himself or a thinly disguised version of the French author musing about the tragedy one year later over his own breakfast in Le Ciel de Paris, on the 56th floor of the Tour Montparnasse, the tallest building in Paris. Each chapter of the novel represents one minute on that fateful morning, from 8:30 to 10:29; nearly all are less than three pages, and several prove startling in their brevity ("In the Windows, the few remaining survivors intone Irving Berlin's 'God Bless America' (1939)"). Both men riff on everything from trivia to politics and make often poignant philosophical observations. Abundant doses of gallows humor at once add levity and underscore the drama. Yorston's overheard snatches of fatuous cell-phone conversations, for example, would be funny in another context, while the enforced exit of a cigar-smoking guest at Windows on the World "thereby proves that a cigar can save your life." Though some readers may be put off by this novel's subject matter, Beigbeder invests his narrators with such profound humanity that the book is far more than a litany of catastrophe: it is, on all levels, a stunning read. FYI:Beigbeder's novel debuted at #2 on the French bestseller list. The English edition is slightly different from the French original because, Beigbeder writes in an
