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Martin Amis, 1949-2023

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Where to start reading Martin Amis

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Podcasts

The Vintage Podcast: Ian McEwan and Martin Amis in conversation

The Information

Martin Amis (Author) 
Martin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century – in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience – he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023. 
 
James Wood (Introducer) 
James Wood has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2007. In 2009, he won the National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism. He was the chief literary critic at the Guardian from 1992 to 1995, and a book critic at the New Republic from 1995 to 2007. He has published a number of books with Cape, including How Fiction Works, which has been translated into thirteen languages.

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

Money

Martin Amis (Author) Martin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century – in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience – he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION FROM ANDREW O'HAGAN 
 
John Self is a consumer extraordinaire. 
 
Rolling between London and New York he closes movie deals and spends feverishly, all the while grabbing everything he can to sate his massive appetites: alcohol, tobacco, pills, pornography and mountains of junk food. But John's excesses haven't gone un-noted. Menaced by a phone stalker, his high-wire, hoggish lifestyle is about to bring him face-to-face with the secret of his success. 
 
'Turbo-charged with savage humour from first to last page... A voice that mesmerised a generation' Guardian

The Zone of Interest

Martin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century &ndash; in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience &ndash; he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023.

THE NOVEL THAT INSPIRED THE OSCAR WINNING FILM 
 
Amidst the horrors of Auschwitz, German officer, Angelus Thomsen, has found love. 
 
But unfortunately for Thomsen, the object of his affection is already married to his camp commandant, Paul Doll. 
 
As Thomsen and Doll&rsquo;s wife pursue their passion &ndash; the gears of Nazi Germany&rsquo;s Final Solution grinding around them &ndash; Doll is riven by suspicion. With his dignity in disrepute and his reputation on the line, Doll must take matters into his own hands and bring order back to the chaos that reigns around him. 
 
&lsquo;It is exceptionally brave&hellip;. Shakespearean&hellip;. It&rsquo;s exciting; it&rsquo;s alive; it&rsquo;s more than slightly mad. As the title suggests, it is dreadfully interesting.&rsquo; Sunday Times

The Rachel Papers

50th Anniversary Edition

Martin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century – in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience – he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY CLAIRE LOWDON 
 
Charles Highway is every mother's worst nightmare. 
 
Precociously intelligent, mercilessly manipulative and highly sexed, Charles devotes the last of his teenage years to bedding girls and evading the half-arsed overtures of his distant parents. That is, until, he meets the aloof, wildly unattainable, Rachel. 
 
As Charles's twentieth birthday - and the Oxford entrance exams - loom, his plans for seducing Rachel will draw him into a private collection of obsessional notes and observations: the eponymous 'Rachel Papers'. 
 
WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD 
 
'Scurrilous, shameless and very funny' The Times Literary Supplement 
 
'Amis has brought off the feat of satirizing his contemporaries while making them both funny and, in a bizarre way, moving' Peter Ackroyd

Inside Story

A magisterial, inventive and witty modern classic – Amis’ autobiographical novel and arguably his most important masterpiece to date – the companion volume to EXPERIENCE

Warm, generous and deeply moving... This is not only the best book Amis has written in years; it is up there with Money and London Fields as the finest work he's produced.

World-class talent... With the life-giving warmth of his brilliant, generous, sometimes unsparing critical writing... Martin Amis is my favorite living writer and Inside Story is his most beautiful book.

For my generation of fiction writers, Amis has become like a granite headland, a navigational marker for our collective endeavour. And here...are all the reasons we still love him... Inside Story gives us access to a turbulent, flawed but exceptional writing life.

Another work of genius to remind us that he is the best... Amis writes better than anyone. What a book!

One of Britain's greatest living writers... With each sumptuous sentence he proves his credentials... For fans of his work, Inside Story is a victory lap; newcomers will be steered towards his rich back catalogue.

The Mick Jagger of literature... Amis is the most dazzling prose stylist in post-war British fiction.

Amis's prose, as you should know by now, has a rush and a power that sweeps you along like surf: you're never going to get a sentence that isn't pulling its weight... The scene at Hitchens's deathbed affected me more than anything else I can remember reading.

Inside Story gathers just about every weapon in the writer's armoury... Tender...corrosively witty...swaggeringly funny... It exhilarates.

Amis's nonpareil sentences brim with warmth, candour, soul... He has generously laid out this all-you-can-eat Amis buffet. Dig in.

Funny, tender and captivatingly intelligent.

Consistently intelligent and compulsively readable... [Amis] applies his insight and curiosity as a novelist to this stylish and genuine account of his development as a writer. The result reaches the heights of his finest work.

Profoundly moving... If Experience was Amis elucidating the visible events of his life, the one-10th of the iceberg sitting above the waterline, then this book is a dark and tender exploration of the part that lies submerged.

You really feel that in this book you are getting to the heart of one of the most remarkable writers of our time.

[Martin Amis is a] master chronicler of the male condition.

As always with Amis the prose is beautiful, expressive, and precisely engineered... The book is a boundless treasure filled with hilarious anecdotes, heart-wrenching confessions, and eye-opening revelations.

A deeply engaging 'novelised autobiography' that focuses on love and death... Wonderfully readable, rich in the familiar Amis pleasures of wit, insight, and well-formed anecdotes. An intriguing, often brilliant addition to a storied career.

The unexpected gift of Inside Story comes under the heading of "How to Write". Amis reliably provides synaptic pleasure whenever he pauses to give one of his didactic asides about the English language. It would be worth compiling these in a volume to stand alongside Kingsley's The King's English.

In Amis's writing, [there is] that brilliant observational gift for ironies... There are perfectly crafted scenes that capture the creeping shocks of mortality.

It is always a pleasure to read Martin Amis... [Inside Story] is a generous book in sharing so much with its readers... Brilliant.

An account [of Larkin is] written with such empathy and insight that it is truly harrowing... grandly resonant, brilliantly suggestive.

The book's most solemn task is perhaps that of honouring the dead...and this it accomplishes beautifully.

[In Inside Story] humour and illumination flow.

Sad and funny... Utterly compelling on grief.

This is a celebration of his [Amis's] life in all its exuberant brilliance and melancholy moments.

[Inside Story displays] compelling insights and observations, courage, tenderness; and above all, an undimmed passion for the written word.

Fascinating... Martin Amis at his best, and that is very good indeed.

Inside Story is something particular, something unique... the tenor of his writing...about Israel, the Holocaust and 9/11 reveals a different Amis, and is the source of some of the book's best passages.

Moving... Beneath the attention-seeking is a well-loved author who has gone through his cupboards, giving us all that he has.

A defiant and witty testimony to mortality and a tender remembrance of his friends and literary heroes… I’ve been reading and re-reading it this year

Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year*

'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?

a Mystery Story

Other People

A new reissue series of Martin Amis's novels to mark his 70th birthday

For all its savagery - Other People is a funny book - an achievement light years ahead of his earlier novels

Powerful and electrifying... Other People is a metaphysical thriller, Kafka reshot in the style of Psycho

One of the most gifted novelists of his generation

Amis is a force unto himself... There is, quite simply, no one else like him

Other People is "about" a descent into Hell, Hell being "other people" - it's a very strange and impressive performance

'Other People had me purring with pleasure' The Times 
 
Like a ghost or a fugitive, Mary roams through London - pursuing and pursued by memory and forgetting, by the compelling Amy Hide and the charming Mr Wrong... 
 
Martin Amis sustains an unnervingly high degree of suspense as Mary and the reader yearn to grasp what has happened to Mary's past and ponder what its loss has gained her. Unfolding is a metaphysical thriller where jealousy guarded secrets jostle with startling insights. Other People is ambitious and accomplished, heralding for Amis an unexpected new direction as a novelist and for the rest of us an experience not to be missed.

Martin Amis

Rachel Cusk

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY RACHEL CUSK 
 
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

London Fields

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Remembering the iconic British author.

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Amis's impressive bibliography boasts 14 novels, a memoir, two collections of stories and eight collections of non-fiction. Here, we offer a guide to help you pick which Amis book to read first – or next.

Books by Martin Amis