Mick Jagger of English literature: Who is Martin Amis?
Martin Amis, one of the most famous British novelists of his generation, died in May 2023, aged 73. The author's wife, Isabel Fonseca, announced that he died of esophageal cancer at his home in Florida.
Amis described the excesses of Thatcher's England in his most famous work, Money.
Koba investigated the crimes of Lenin and Stalin in The Dread.
He touched upon the Holocaust in his 1991 novel Time's Arrow, which tells the life of a German doctor in the Auschwitz death camp. He later returned to the subject in his 2014 novel The Zone Of Interest.
Amis, who published his first novel in 1973 at the age of 24, was the son of novelist Kingsley Amis.
Sir Martin Louis Amis (25 August 1949 – 19 May 2023) was an English novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels Money (1984) and London Fields (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir Experience and was twice listed for the Booker Prize (shortlisted in 1991 for Time's Arrow and longlisted in 2003 for Yellow Dog).
When asked about his writing process by the FT in 2013, he said:
“Writing is about freedom, and freedom is indivisible. And to say that you are standing at the gates of Auschwitz and cannot get in makes no critical sense, neither philosophically nor certainly literary.”
Amis, who moved from England to the USA, said in an interview that he missed the "British intelligence":
“The British are very tolerant and generous, but they are also humorous. “Americans are tolerant and generous, but they are a little more serious, a little more stubborn in their thinking.”
Amis's best friend, philosopher Christopher Hitchens, also died of esophageal cancer.
His former UK editor, Dan Franklin, called Amis "the coolest, funniest, most quotable, most beautiful writer in the world of British literature."
Interesting notes from Amis' life
Amis is best known for the 1984 novel Money and the 1989 London Fields. He is the author of 14 novels and several non-fiction books and is considered one of the most influential writers of his time.
Born in Oxford in 1949, he was the son of novelist and poet Sir Kingsley Amis. The younger Amis followed in his father's footsteps after graduating from Oxford University with his first novel, The Rachel Papers.
His first semi-autobiographical novel, The Rachel Papers, propelled him onto the literary scene in 1973. This novel, about the frustrations of a certain kind of bright young man, was wildly imaginative.