Martin Amis, one of the most influential writers of his generation, has died at the age of 73.
The author of era-defining novels, including Money and London Fields, Amis was the enfant terrible of British fiction for much of his illustrious career. In later life he was equally celebrated and criticized. But overall he was widely regarded as the most dazzling stylist of his time.
He died Friday at his Florida home of esophageal cancer, the same disease that afflicted his best friend and co-author Christopher Hitchens in 2011.
In addition to 15 novels, Amis, the son of writer Kingsley Amis, wrote the critically acclaimed memoir Experience, non-fiction and essays. His later work dealt with Stalin’s atrocities, the war on terror and the legacy of the Holocaust.
He once said of his work, “I tried to create a high style to describe low things: the whole world of fast food, sex shows, nude magazines.”
Renowned British author Martin Amis has died at the age of 73 after suffering from cancer
Mr. Amis published 15 novels over the course of his career and rose to prominence in the 1980s and ’90s.
Its publisher Vintage Books said in a statement: “We are devastated by the passing of our author and friend Martin Amis: novelist, essayist, memoirist, critic and stylist preeminent.”
“For 40 years, Martin Amis shaped the world of British publishing: first he defined what it means to be a literary prodigy by publishing his first novel at just 24; influence on a generation of prose stylists; and often he sums up entire epochs in his books, perhaps most notably in his classic novel Money.
In books such as The Second Plane and his collection of essays The Rub of Time, he has kept himself constantly engaged with current events and today’s world, never shying away from tackling the biggest issues and questions of the day.
“At the same time, his work often dealt with key periods of history, particularly the Holocaust, about which he wrote in novels such as Time’s Arrow and The Zone of Interest in a unique and powerful way.
“Throughout all of this, his love of literature was clearly expressed: Experience, The War Against Stereotypes, and others shed light on the world he had lived in all his life.”
He never won the Booker Prize, but was shortlisted for Time’s Arrow in 1991 and longlisted for Yellow Dog in 2003.
His last novel, Inside Story, published in 2020, was a “romanized autobiography” that explored his friendship with Hitchens and his relationship with his father.
In addition to 15 novels, Amis, the son of writer Kingsley Amis, wrote the critically acclaimed memoir Experience, non-fiction and essays. His later work dealt with Stalin’s atrocities, the war on terror and the legacy of the Holocaust
Mr Amis was the son of noted 1950s writer Kingsley Amis, who died in 1995.
Mr Amis said it was both a blessing and a curse to have a famous writer for a father, but acknowledged he would have been in a “very different position” had his father been a teacher.
Martin Louis Amis was born in Oxford on August 25, 1949 and had an older brother, Philip, and a younger sister, Sally, who died in 2000.
He only read comics until his stepmother, the writer Elizabeth Jane Howard, introduced him to Jane Austen, whom he often credits as his earliest inspiration.
He studied at Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated with honors in English in 1971.
Mr. Amis wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers, at nights and weekends in 1973, noting that if it had failed he might have considered an academic career.
In 1984, Mr. Amis married Antonia Phillips, a widowed Boston philosophy teacher, and they had two sons, Louis and Jacob.
After he and Ms Phillips divorced, Mr Amis married Uruguayan-American writer Isabel Fonseca in 1998.
He returned to the UK in September 2006 after living in Uruguay for two and a half years with his second wife and two young daughters.
Mr Amis became a grandfather in 2008 when his daughter Delilah gave birth to a son.
Martin Amis (right) pictured at the 1996 British Book Awards with his second wife Isabel Fonseca and writer Salman Rushdie
Despite being a good friend of Christopher Hitchens, Mr. Amis said in 2006 that “simply because our ignorance of the universe is so great, agnostic is the only respectable position” that atheism was “premature.”
In 2010 he said, “I’m an agnostic, which is the only sane position.” It’s not because I feel a God or think anything resembling the mundane God of religion will emerge.
“But I think atheism sounds like proof of something, and it’s incredibly obvious that we’re nowhere near intelligent enough to understand the universe…Writers are, first and foremost, individualists, and writing is, first of all, freedom, so become.” they go in.” all sorts of directions.
“I think it applies to the debate about religion, since it’s about a grumpy novelist who pulls down the shutters and says, ‘There’s nothing else.’ Don’t use the word God: but something smarter than we… If we can’t understand it, then it’s terrible. And we understand very little.’