Amy Waldman did not read most of the 9/11 novels before she started writing her own. DeLillo, Amis, Updike, Foer—she didn’t need to read them. Ms. Waldman was in New York on the day itself, in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion and in South Asia as the United States dug in to combat in Iraq. Having watched the new world order evolve both here and abroad, the book that she eventually decided to write is more a synthesis of her firsthand experience as a reporter than an examination of collective memory. But what’s remarkable about her new counterfactual novel about the World Trade Center, The Submission, is that it will likely be remembered as one of the first satires of post-9/11 New York City: a place where tragedy is exploited by the ambitious and powerful to self-interested ends. Read More