SINGAPORE - On the 20th anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, here are seven books that look back at that pivotal moment in history.
1. In The Shadow Of No Towers
By Art Spiegelman
Graphic novel/Viking/2004/Hardcover/48 pages/$91.08/Available here
Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist best known for his Holocaust graphic novel Maus (1980 to 1991), witnessed the Sept 11 attacks first-hand and responds in this visual memoir. It was first serialised as a comic strip in the German newspaper Die Zeit from 2002 to 2004, as mainstream American publications would not carry it.
2. 102 Minutes
By Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn
Non-fiction/Times Books/2005/Paperback/400 pages/$40.95/Available here
The New York Times journalists chronicle the minutes between the first plane crash and the collapse of the north tower, culled from the accounts, messages and conversation transcripts of the people trapped in the World Trade Center.
3. Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close
By Jonathan Safran Foer
Fiction/Penguin Books/2005/Paperback/368 pages/$19.26/Available here
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell, still grieving the death of his father in the attacks, discovers a key hidden in a vase in his father's closet and embarks on a hunt around New York to find the story behind it, as well as closure for his loss. The novel was adapted into a 2011 film starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock.
4. The Looming Tower
By Lawrence Wright
Non-fiction/Penguin Books/2006/Paperback/576 pages/$25.02/Available here
Wright, a staff writer for The New Yorker, won the Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction for his seminal history of how 9/11 came about and the men who made it happen - Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri - as well as Federal Bureau of Investigation counterterrorism chief John O'Neill, who tried to track Al-Qaeda before the attacks and died in the collapse of the towers.
5. Falling Man
By Don DeLillo
Fiction/Pan Macmillan/2007/Paperback/256 pages/$21.95/Available here
"It was not a street anymore but a world, a time and space of falling ash and near night," writes DeLillo in his novel, in which a lawyer, Keith, survives the collapse of the towers and arrives injured on the doorstep of his estranged wife Lianne.
They navigate the aftermath of the attacks, as a performance artist known as Falling Man begins appearing around New York, suspended head-first in a harness in a reference to the controversial Associated Press photo of a man falling from the north tower.
6. The Reluctant Fundamentalist
By Mohsin Hamid
Non-fiction/Penguin Books/2007/Paperback/224 pages/$19.26/Available here
In a Lahore cafe, a young Pakistani man, Changez, recounts to an American stranger his life story, including his time in the United States as an affluent analyst and how post-9/11 politics eventually drove him back to Lahore, where he became an anti-American activist. The Booker Prize-shortlisted novel was adapted for film in 2012 by director Mira Nair.
7. The Only Plane In The Sky
By Garrett Graff
Non-fiction/Avid Reader Press/2019/Paperback/528 pages/$31.59/Available here
Journalist Graff assembles a wrenching oral history of 9/11 from nearly 500 people, such as the firefighter searching for his wife at the World Trade Center; the telephone operator asked to pass a passenger's last words to his family; and those aboard Air Force One, which, as flights across the country were grounded, remained the only plane in the sky.
