With writers you grew up reading, their departure leaves a space in your life that is as close to an ache as books and literature can get. That’s how I feel about Martin Amis.
Amis, who died in 2023 at the age of 73 from cancer, was one of Britain’s most distinctive and dazzling literary voices. The son of Kingsley Amis, author of Lucky Jim, he forged his own reputation as a bold stylist and razor-sharp satirist, chronicling the absurdities and moral disintegration of late 20th-century life with wit, intellect and a signature swagger.
To read Amis was to be overwhelmed (and sometimes bewildered) by language. He played with words in ways few others could. His writing was precise, yet full of flourishes—barbed, digressive and often comic. His characters were rarely heroic. His sentences often were.
“A writer’s life is all anxiety and frustration. You write and you write and you can’t help wondering whether you’re ever really getting anywhere. And then someone says something nice.” — The Information
He was often called divisive. His characters could be grotesque, his themes unflinchingly dark: violence, vanity, sex, self-destruction, fascism, nuclear dread. He tackled subjects most writers would avoid, writing about the Holocaust three times—first in Bujak and the Strong Force (Einstein's Monsters, 1987), then in Time's Arrow (1991), and finally in The Zone of Interest (2014). The last was brilliantly adapted into an award-winning film by Jonathan Glazer.
In these works, he brought cold clarity. He refused to flinch or pander. He was, above all, a stylist. “Style,” he once said, “is not neutral; it gives moral directions.”
At his best, he was also funny. Not charming-funny, but brutal, biting, caustic—and he knew it.
“The world is a funny place,” he wrote in London Fields. “It deserves some honest laughs.”
Where to start: Five essential Martin Amis novels
1. Money (1984)
Arguably his masterpiece. Subtitled A Suicide Note, this is a savage black comedy about greed, addiction and the sleaze of 1980s excess. Narrated by John Self—a repulsive, hilarious and oddly sympathetic antihero—it’s a novel about what happens when consumer culture eats itself.
“Whatever I take, I take too much. Whatever I give, I give too little. Whatever I do, I do it too late.”
The 2010 BBC adaptation was visually interesting but never quite captured the rhythm or spirit of Amis’s prose.
2. London Fields (1989)
A dystopian murder mystery and metafictional romp. It plays with time, narration and storytelling itself. Packed with dread, lust and some of Amis’s finest writing.
“This is a true story, but I can't believe it's really happening.”
3. The Information (1995)
Two writers. One successful, the other consumed by envy. A novel about ambition, middle age and male bitterness. Bleak and brilliant.
“Writers die twice. Once when the body dies, and once when the last reader dies.”
4. Time’s Arrow (1991)
Told in reverse chronology, this daring novel follows a Nazi doctor from death to youth. A meditation on guilt and complicity—and a technical masterclass. Its influence from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is unmistakable.
“The past is always tense, the future perfect.”
5. Inside Story (2020)
His final novel blends memoir, fiction and essay. A moving reflection on writing, friendship and mortality, featuring portraits of Christopher Hitchens, Saul Bellow and Philip Larkin.
“It was always the writing. That’s what mattered. That’s what saved me.”
Bonus: The Rachel Papers (1973)
Amis’s debut, written at 24, won the Somerset Maugham Award and introduced his provocative voice. A coming-of-age story about sex, class and ego—it’s brash, funny and sharply self-aware.
“My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel.”
The 1989 film adaptation, like the later one of Money, failed to capture the novel’s irony and energy. Both are reminders that Amis’s voice is, above all else, literary.
Writers influenced by Martin Amis
Amis’s legacy is visible across generations of writers in the UK, US and beyond. His irreverence, sentence-level brilliance and fearless subjects made a lasting impression.
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Zadie Smith has cited Money and London Fields as key influences:
“He was the first writer I ever read who made me laugh out loud… and feel intellectually anxious at the same time.”
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Ian McEwan, a close friend, said:
“The most original stylist of his generation. He reinvigorated the British novel at a time when it badly needed it.”
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David Foster Wallace admired London Fields, sharing Amis’s fascination with language and irony.
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Olivia Laing called his writing dazzling:
“Reading Martin Amis, you realise how alive a sentence can be.”
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Bret Easton Ellis called Money one of the greatest novels of the late 20th century.
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Sally Rooney has said that The Information helped her understand the creative ego and the literary culture she grew up observing.
Though Amis was sometimes criticised for his public persona, for misogyny or nihilism, his literary legacy is clear. He didn’t just write novels—he made the novel feel dangerous, stylish and alive again.
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