Sir Martin Amis | |
|---|---|
 Amis in 2014 | |
| Born | Martin Louis Amis 25 August 1949 Oxford, England |
| Died | 19 May 2023 (aged 73) Lake Worth Beach, Florida, US |
| Pen name | Henry Tilney |
| Alma mater | Exeter College, Oxford |
| Notable works |
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| Notable awards | Knight Bachelor 2023 |
| Spouse |
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| Children | 5 |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | Sally Amis (sister) |
Sir Martin Louis Amis FRSL[1] (25 August 1949 – 19 May 2023) was an English novelist, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter and critic. 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). Amis was a professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester's Centre for New Writing from 2007 until 2011.[2] In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.[3]
Amis's work centres on the excesses of "late-capitalist" Western society, whose perceived absurdity he often satirised through grotesque caricature. He was portrayed by some literary critics as a master of what The New York Times called "the new unpleasantness".[4] He was inspired by Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov, as well as by his father Kingsley Amis. Amis influenced many British novelists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including Will Self and Zadie Smith.[5]
A life-long smoker, Amis died from oesophageal cancer at his house in Florida in 2023.[6] The New York Times wrote after his death: "To come of reading age in the last three decades of the 20th century – from the oil embargo through the fall of the Berlin Wall, all the way to 9/11 – was to live, it now seems clear, in the Amis Era."[7]
- ^ "Martin Amis". Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original on 21 May 2023. Retrieved 21 May 2023.
- ^ Page, Benedicte (26 January 2011). "Colm Tóibín takes over teaching job from Martin Amis". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 14 April 2012. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
- ^ "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". The Times. 5 January 2008. ISSN 0140-0460. Archived from the original on 19 February 2020. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
- ^ Stout, Mira. "Martin Amis: Down London's mean streets" Archived 8 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, 4 February 1990.
- ^ "Martin Amis" Archived 6 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian, 22 July 2008.
- ^ "Master stylist Martin Amis was the Mick Jagger of the literary world". The Independent. 21 May 2023. Archived from the original on 16 June 2024. Retrieved 24 May 2023.
- ^ Scott, A.O. (22 May 2023). "Good Night, Sweet Prince". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 30 May 2023. Retrieved 31 May 2023.