Martin Amis

Martin Amis delivers a rapid-fire, hilariously sharp collection that skewers everything from politics to celebrity, all while weaving unforgettable tales of adventure, absurdity, and insight. In this sharp, fast-paced collection, Martin Amis invites readers on a whirlwind of both literal and intellectual adventures. From topless sunbathing to airplane crashes and nuclear holocausts, he skewers everything with his signature humor and razor-sharp wit. Whether he's kicking a soccer ball with Elton John in China or perfecting a dart throw in a chaotic London pub, Amis delivers an unforgettable mix of insight, laughter, and keen observations. With biting precision, Amis takes on everything from American politics--slamming the Reagan years as an eight-year blackout--to the absurdities of celebrity and the world of chess. An afternoon with Vera Nabokov offers a candid reflection on her late husband's towering literary legacy, while his dissection of sport reveals a Zen-like quest for perfection that's as amusing as it is enlightening. Amis is as subversive as ever, using language with dazzling flair to entertain, provoke, and entertain again. Visiting Mrs. Nabokov is a zippy, irresistible dive into Amis's world--perfect for newcomers or longtime fans looking for that spark of insight and wit that only he can provide.

A masterful short story collection in which Martin Amis wields his sharp wit and dark humor to unravel the complexities of desire, loneliness, and mankind's place in the universe. Heavy Water is a masterful and haunting collection from Martin Amis, where his signature wit and deep insight into the human condition uncover life's most unsettling truths. In "Career Move," Amis turns the literary world on its head, exposing the absurdities of contemporary culture as poets bask in fame while screenwriters struggle for recognition. "Denton's Death" follows a protagonist awaiting his inevitable assassination, offering a chilling meditation on the fragility of life and the inevitable pull of fate. In "The Coincidence of the Arts," an English baronet's life becomes entwined with a chess hustler and an enigmatic, silent woman, exploring the unpredictable nature of desire and fate's strange intersections. "The Janitor on Mars" confronts humanity's deepest anxieties as a robot from Mars reveals a disquieting truth about mankind's place in the universe. Through Heavy Water, Amis explores the absurdities of existence with his signature blend of dark humor, intellectual rigor, and moral complexity. Each story invites readers to navigate a world where the strange and the profound coexist, offering a daring reflection on the nature of reality itself.

Martin Amis's first novel, The Rachel Papers, tells the story of Charles Highway and his relationship with his girlfriend in the year before going to university--with a new introduction by Paul Murray. Charles Highway, a bright, egotistical Oxford student and soon-to-be Great Novelist, spends the eve of his twentieth birthday reflecting on his adolescence--at times stimulating, often embarrassing, and never nearly as debauched as he'd have liked. Until he meets Rachel Noyes, an elusive, unattainable, manic pixie mystery of a girl whom Charles quickly becomes entranced by. He meticulously draws up battle plans and strategies for how to seduce Rachel, and thus the "Rachel Papers" are born. Unflinchingly honest, comedically brilliant, and unapologetically original, Martin Amis's first novel, The Rachel Papers, is a masterful account of the passion and fickleness of first lust--and love.

A wry, incisive satire of envy and ambition following a failed novelist's absurd quest to sabotage his more successful rival--with a new introduction by James Wood. Richard Tull, a failed and disillusioned novelist, seethes with envy as he watches his longtime friend Gwyn Barry, a talentless, populist charlatan, rise to literary superstardom. Barry is adored by readers, celebrated by critics, and constantly in the public eye, while Tull sinks deeper into middle-aged obscurity, unable to escape the evidence of his own defeat. In a trance of impotent rage, Tull devises a vicious plan to ruin his friend--or at least hurt him as badly as possible--and finds himself tumbling into London's criminal underworld, as well as the darkest precincts of his own soul. Laced with Martin Amis's signature linguistic brilliance and exquisite satirical bite, The Information probes the corrosive power of envy, the absurdity of rivalry, the hollow victories of modern fame, and the agonizing smallness of man's place in the universe. By turns hilarious and devastating, it is the work of a literary master at the peak of his dazzling powers.

From "one of the most gifted novelists of his generation" (Time), Other People is a tale about a woman's path toward self-actualization.A woman wakes in an emergency room and remembers nothing--not even her own name. She hears a song about a "Mary" and a "lamb," and decides to call herself this--Mary Lamb--until she can discover more about her past. While trying to unravel the mystery of herself, Mary meets a host of characters--a troubled woman named Sharon, a police officer named Prince who seems to know who she is, a man who works at the same caf as Mary and is deeply infatuated with her. But Mary doesn't know whom she can trust--if anyone at all. In this luminous, electrifying novel, Martin Amis crafts a brilliant metaphysical mystery about the destruction and creation of one woman.

Martin Amis blends vivid memories, sharp wit, and tender honesty to deliver an unforgettable memoir that explores his relationships with family, personal tragedies, and the absurdities of being known. In Experience, the celebrated novelist Martin Amis steps away from fiction to deliver a sharply observed memoir, weaving together the personal and the universal in his signature dazzling style. Through a mosaic of vivid memories, Amis reflects on his extraordinary life: his complex relationship with his father, the iconic author Kingsley Amis; the heavily publicized murder of his cousin Lucy Partington by a notorious serial killer; and the relentless absurdities of public life, from tabloid scandals to literary feuds. Alongside these moments of tragedy and humor, he offers tender vignettes on fatherhood, family, and the legacies we inherit. Crackling with Amis's linguistic brilliance and wry humor, Experience reveals a writer both unflinchingly honest and profoundly human. Part elegy, part love letter, and part self-portrait, this memoir is a masterwork of reflection on life, loss, and the enduring power of family.

Named one of Time's 100 best novels in the English language, Money is "savagely hilarious. It risks, it boils with energy . . . it even manages to shock" (The Washington Post). Including a new introduction by Lorrie Moore, author of I Am Homeless If This Is Not My HomeOriginally published in 1984, Martin Amis's classic novel Money is a searing critique of late-stage capitalism that remains a poignant and relevant commentary on the trappings of materialism and the illusions of success. Money is everything. Especially to John Self, a successful commercial director from London. He spends his days steeped in booze and pornography and prostitutes, lost in the hedonistic lifestyle of his peers. But John has bigger dreams, and he sets off for America on the invitation of the filmmaker Fielding Goodney in the hope of getting his first feature film, titled Good Money, off the ground. It is in America where John must contend with his degenerative proclivities, or risk the life he's built. Money is Martin Amis at his very best: a hilarious, razor-sharp, and wholly singular storyteller.

Newly reissued for the modern reader, Martin Amis's Success is "a terrifying, painfully funny, Swiftian exercise in moral disgust" (The Observer). Foster brothers Terrance Service and Gregory Riding could not be more different from one another--Terry "a quivering condom of neurosis and ineptitude" and Greg a "bundle of contempt, vanity and stock-response." After the shocking killing of Terry's child sister, he is taken in by the aristocratic and wealthy Riding family and introduced to his new foster brother and sister, Greg and Ursula. As adults, the two boys unhappily share a tiny apartment in London. Greg spends his days tormenting Terry and engaging in plenty of messy, meaningless sex, while Terry suffers through a dead-end job and exists wholly in his brother's cold and looming shadow, licking his wounds from a lifetime of romantic and social failures. Told throughout the course of one year in Terry and Greg's lives, Success shows just how fickle luck can be, and how quickly one's life can be totally, horribly changed. With caustic, searing prose, Success is a firecracker revenge story for the ages.

Dead Babies, a hilarious Agatha Christie parody and Martin Amis's second novel, was deemed his "most incendiary" (the BBC). Within the quiet walls of the Appleseed Rectory, a gorgeous five-bedroom, three-story home in rural England, anything goes: the drugs are consumed with gusto, the booze flows like water, and the sex is near constant and deliciously debauched. When six uppity twenty-somethings gather at the rectory for a careless weekend away, things quickly go awry. And when someone named Johnny begins leaving threatening letters around the house, the group is thoroughly shaken--no one has any clue who this "Johnny" could be. A dizzying whirlwind of a novel, Dead Babies is a lurid, sharp, and darkly hilarious indictment of the horrifying vices and shameless self-indulgences of privileged youth.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY RACHEL CUSKWriter, 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

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION FROM ANDREW O'HAGANJohn 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

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY JAMES WOODOnce 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

Kafkianskaja "komedija" pro Kholokost odnogo iz luchshikh pisatelej sovremennosti.Luchshaja kniga goda po versijam: Time, NPR, The Village Voice, The Miami Herald, Financial Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, BookRiot.Roman klassika anglijskoj literatury Martina Emisa - eto gluboko originalnoe, otchasti provokativnoe vyskazyvanie, po-novomu fiksirujuschee vnimanie na teme Kholokosta i Vtoroj mirovoj vojny. Emis privnosit v razgovor ob uzhasakh proshlogo intonatsii i ottenki, nikogda prezhde ne zvuchavshie v podobnom kontekste. "Zona interesov" - eto odnovremenno i ljubovnyj roman (dvoe iz trekh geroev-rasskazchikov - komendant kontslagerja i sluzhaschij v nem ofitser - ljubjat odnu zhenschinu, a tretij - evrej-zakljuchennyj - gotov na ubijstvo ili samoubijstvo radi spasenija zheny, popavshej v lapy natsistov), i antivoennaja satira v luchshikh traditsijakh "Bravogo soldata Shvejka" (komendant lagerja vyveden v otkrovenno komicheskikh i grotesknykh tonakh), i klassicheskij primer literaturnoj polifonii. Odnako kljuchevaja ideja romana vykhodit daleko za ramki predskazuemykh "vsjudu zhizn" i "banalnost zla": melodramatizm i obmanchivaja legkost sjuzheta sluzhat Emisu lish sredstvom, pozvoljajuschim jarche vysvetit absurdnost i tragizm situatsii. 19 maja 2023 goda na 76-m mezhdunarodnom kinofestivale v Kannakh sostojalas premera filma "Zona interesov", rezhisser Dzhonatan Glejzer. V etot zhe samyj den skonchalsja Martin Emis. Film vyzval na festivale burnuju i dolguju ovatsiju. Kartina poluchila Gran-pri Kann i priz FIPRESSI. Roman Martina Emisa i ego ekranizatsija, rasskazyvajuschie istoriju, kazalos by, iz uzhe ushedshej epokhi, vnezapno obreli zvenjaschuju aktualnost, rezoniruja s tem, chto proiskhodit v mire sejchas. V marte 2024 "Zona interesov" poluchila premiju "Oskar" kak luchshij inostrannyj film.

THE NOVEL THAT INSPIRED THE OSCAR WINNING FILMAmidst 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’s wife pursue their passion – the gears of Nazi Germany’s Final Solution grinding around them – 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.‘It is exceptionally brave…. Shakespearean…. It’s exciting; it’s alive; it’s more than slightly mad. As the title suggests, it is dreadfully interesting.’ Sunday Times

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY CLAIRE LOWDONCharles 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

Rachel - en innføring er en kynisk komedie om å bli voksen, eller snarere om ikke å bli det. Romanen er passe uskikkelig og kul, ekstremt velskrevet og samtidig skrikende opptatt av - og avslørende for - et ungt sinn som prøver å finne opp seg selv, om unge mennesker som prøver å finne en identitet, og er på den måten en hyperaktuell klassiker. Allerede i sin noe skandaløse debutroman, ga Martin Amis leserne en av de mest kvalmende troverdige - og merkelig rørende - ungdomsportrettene som noensinne har utstilt sitt begjær på samtidslitteraturens boksider. Charles Highway er knapt tjue, og forbereder seg litt uengasjert på å bli student i Oxford. Han viser en munter avsky for sin far og planlegger omhyggelig forførelsen av en jente ved navn Rachel - en jente som setter hans narsissistiske kynisme på prøve når han plutselig opplever å være forelsket i henne. Rachel - en innføring er etter hvert en klassiker fra de indre sirkler av Swinging London, og samtidig en perfekt coming of age-roman som utøver sin tiltrekning også i dag, femti år etter at den kom ut første gang.