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Perhaps the most gifted and innovative novelist of his generation. Martin Amis has been the object of obsessive media scrutiny for much of his career. In this much anticipated memoir, he writes with striking candour about his life and, in the process, giv
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY JAMES WOOD Once close friends, writers Gwyn Barry and Richard Tull now find themselves in fierce competition. While Tull has spiralled into a mire of literary obscurity and belletristic odd jobs, Barry’s atrocious attempts at novels have brought him untold success. Prizes, prestige and wealth abound, and from far below Tull can only watch, stewing in torment. Until, that is, resentment turns to revenge. Consumed by the question of how one writer can really hurt another, Tull’s quest for an answer will unleash increasingly violent urges on both writers’ lives. ‘A funny, vicious portrait of literary London’ Evening Standard
This is the story of John Self, consumer extraordinaire. Ceaselessly inventive and savage, this is a tale of life lived without restraint; of money, the terrible things it can do and the disasters it can precipitate.
Writer, Samson Young, is staring death in the face, and not only his own. Void of ideas and on the verge of terminal decline, Samson’s dash to a decaying, degenerate London has brought him through the doors of the Black Cross pub and into a murder story just waiting to be narrated. At its centre is the mesmeric, doomed Nicola Six, destined to be murdered on her 35th birthday. Around her: the disreputable men who might yet turn out to be her killer. All Samson has to do is to write Nicola’s story as it happens, and savour in this one last gift that life has granted him. 'A true story, a murder story, a love story and a thriller bursting with humour, sex and often dazzling language' Independent
From one of the most gifted and innovative writers of our time, an autobiographical novel that’s a tender, witty exploration of the hardest questions: how to live, how to grieve, and how to die “[A] charismatic compound of fact and fiction...Martin Amis has retained the power to surprise.” —The New York Times This novel had its birth in the death of Martin Amis's closest friend, the incomparable Christopher Hitchens, and it is within that profound and sprawling friendship that Inside Story unfurls. From their early days as young magazine staffers in London, reviewing romantic entanglements and the latest literary gossip (not to mention ideas, books, and where to lunch), Hitch was Ami...
Smooth-talking, sensual and self-deluded, Gregory Riding leads an existence of formidable foppishness, his days and nights a series of effortless, titillating conquests and tireless sex - sister, employers, acquaintances are but co-stars among a cast of t
A sharp twist on the noir genre from one of England’s finest fiction writers 'I worked one hundred murders,' says Detective Mike Hoolihan, an American policewoman. 'In my time I have come in on the aftermath of maybe a thousand suspicious deaths, most of which turned out to be suicides, accidentals or plain unattendeds. So I've seen them all: jumpers, stumpers, dumpers, dunkers, bleeders, floaters, poppers, bursters. But of all the bodies I have ever seen none has stayed with me, in my gut, like the body of Jennifer Rockwell. I say all this because I am part of the story I am going to tell, and I feel the need to give you some idea of where I'm coming from.' Night Train is a mystery story which lingers in the reader's mind even after Mike Hoolihan declares the case closed. ‘Tough, noir, Chandleresque’ Independent ‘Night Train is both delicate and bruising - a long drawn-out blue note. The book hangs around in the mind like smoke in a jazz club’ Telegraph Magazine
'Utterly compelling' Guardian Life...is shapeless, it does not point to and gather round anything, it does not cohere. Artistically, it's dead. Life's dead. So begins a love letter to life, a resuscitation of sorts, encountering vibrant characters from Saul Bellow, to Philip Larkin to Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Jane Howard, and to the person who captivated Amis' twenties, the alluringly amoral Phoebe Phelps. Amis addresses our burning questions: how to live, how to grieve, and how to die?
Martin Amis's life could itself provide the formula for an enthralling work of fiction. Son of one of the most popular and best-loved novelists of the post-War era, he has forged a groundbreaking manner of writing that owes nothing to the style of his father, nor indeed to anyone else. He relished and recorded the bizarre, turbulent atmosphere of Britain and the US during the 1970s and 80s, arguably the transformative period of the late 20th century. No other contemporary writer has proved so magnetic for the popular press: he has, despite himself, achieved celebrity status. Of late, his reputation as a novelist has been matched by his outspoken, challenging writing on contemporary global po...
Booker-shortlisted for Time's Arrow and widely known for his novels, short stories, essays, reviews, and autobiographical works, Martin Amis is one of the most influential of contemporary British writers. This guide to Amis's diverse and often controversial work offers: an accessible introduction to the contexts and many interpretations of his texts, from publication to the present an introduction to key critical texts and perspectives on Amis's life and work, situated within a broader critical history cross-references between sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism suggestions for further reading. Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of Martin Amis and seeking not only a guide to his works but also a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds them.