Once the enfant terrible of British literature, Martin Amis established himself as a mainstay: in 2008, he was named one of 50 best British writers since 1945; he’s been listed for the Booker Prize twice; and his influence has been noted by newer literary names like Zadie Smith and Will Self .
With 14 novels, a memoir, two collections of stories and eight collections of non-fiction to his name, Amis’s body of work can be a difficult one to navigate – which book should you read first? Here, we tend to the unpacking for you, identifying and contextualising the best and boldest books from an author known for them.
'Life...is shapeless, it does not point to and gather round anything, it does not cohere. Artistically, it's dead. Life's dead.'
Amis' most recent novel is up there with his very best, as something quite inventive and unique: an autobiographical novel.
Witty, moving and full of rich, revelatory insight into his relationships with characters such as Saul Bellow, Christopher Hitchens, Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin and Phoebe Phelps, Amis also interweaves guidelines on all he has learned about writing in his illustrious seven-decade career.
Inside Story is a rewarding read both for fans of his work and will push newcomers towards his extensive back catalogue.
'Like most people, I feel ambiguous guilt for my inferiors, ambiguous envy for my superiors, and mandatory low-spirits about the system itself.'
In his uproarious first novel, Amis gave us one of the most noxiously believable – and curiously touching – adolescents in contemporary fiction. 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.
As Charles’s 20th birthday – and the Oxford entrance exams – loom, he meticulously plots – with obsessional notes and observations – the seduction of Rachel, a girl who sorely tests the mettle of his cynicism when he finds himself falling in love with her. Bursting with raw talent, The Rachel Papers is hyper-self-conscious, ingeniously obscene and genuinely funny.
'Happiness writes white: it doesn’t show up on the page.'
Published in 1989, London Fields was written during turbulent times and it shows. The novel is a virtuoso depiction of a wild, immoral society and the questionable characters who inhabit it. Writer, 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: disreputable men, one of whom might yet turn out to be her killer. London Fields is an infuriating and exciting con trick, an elaborate set up by the characters against other characters, and by the author against the reader. Will you fall for it?
