Amis, Martin

Amis, Martin (ā`mĭs), 1949–, English novelist; son of Kingsley Amis. The younger Amis, who turned from literary journalism to fiction, invites comparison with his father through his choice of career and style. Often writing satire so bitterly sardonic that it goes far beyond the caustic comedy of his father's fiction, he has exposed the darker aspects of contemporary English society in his novels. Among them are The Rachel Papers (1973), Dead Babies (1975), Money (1984), London Fields (1990), Time's Arrow (1991), The Information (1995), and Yellow Dog (2003). His short-story collections include Heavy Water and Other Stories (1999). Among his nonfiction works are The War against Cliché (2001), a selection of essays, and Koba the Dread (2002), an examination of Stalinism's horrors and the attitudes of Western intellectuals toward the Soviet regime. His subsequent novel House of Meetings (2006) is a powerful fictional memoir that treats similar themes—the monstrous nature of the Soviet gulag and Stalinist atrocities.

Bibliography

See his memoir Experience (2000); studies by J. Diedrick (1995, repr. 2004), J. A. Dern (2000), G. Keulks (2003 and, ed., 2006).

---

Amis, Martin

(born Aug. 25, 1949, Oxford, Oxfordshire, Eng.) British writer and critic. The son of writer Kingsley Amis, he graduated from Oxford University in 1971. He worked for the Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman before becoming a full-time writer. His works—including the novels Money (1984), London Fields (1989), Time's Arrow (1991), and Night Train (1998)—feature inventive word play and often scabrous humour as they satirize the horrors of modern life. Amis also published an acclaimed autobiography, Experience (2000). Stalinism is the subject of the nonfiction Koba the Dread (2002) and the novel House of Meetings (2006).