Different versions of a text sometimes reveal a hitherto unnoted but crucial point for its interpretation: this is the case even in contemporary literature. Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow, or the Nature of the Offence was first published by Jonathan Cape in September 1991. A month later, an American edition of the novel, with some small but significant revisions, was released by Harmony Books. Most of these changes were purely formal. British words such as ‘lorry’ 1 and ‘pushchairs’ (JC 41) were replaced by their American equivalents, ‘truck’ 2 and ‘strollers’ (HB 33), and spellings were Americanized, the title of the HB edition becoming Time’s Arrow, or the Nature of the Offense....