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10
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5
Awards
Martin Amis, writer and actor who appeared in London Fields 2018 and The Zone of Interest 2023, died on May 19, 2023 in Lake Worth, Florida, at age 73 from esophageal cancer. The son of novelist Kingsley Amis, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He also acted as a child in A High Wind in Jamaica 1965.
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Martin Amis — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Kingsley Amis’s son Martin was born on August 25, 1949 in Oxford, Oxfordshire. He attended several schools, including Westminster School, but Sir Walter St John’s grammar school expelled him at age 15 for taking four months off to act in A High Wind in Jamaica 1965. After a period of poor academic performance, he studied Latin and poetry to pass the entrance exam for Exeter College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class degree in English.
Martin Amis began his career in journalism as a book reviewer for the London Observer in 1971. By 1974 he was fiction and poetry editor at the London Times Literary Supplement. He also worked for the New Statesman and the London Observer before becoming a full-time writer. His novels earned him major awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He appeared as an actor in film adaptations of his works, playing Julian Neat in London Fields 2018 and appearing in The Zone of Interest 2023. He also had a role in Saturn 3 1980.
Martin Amis married twice: first to Antonia Phillips from 1984 to 1993, and then to Isabel Fonseca from 1996 until his death. He had five children: Delilah, Louis, Jacob, Fernanda, and Clio. Through his father’s marriage to novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, he became her stepson. In the 1970s he was the longtime companion of editor Tina Brown.
Critics compared Martin Amis’s work to that of Vladimir Nabokov and Saul Bellow, marking him as a major figure in late 20th-century British literature. He was invested as a Knight Bachelor in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours List for services to literature, an honor announced just before his death. His sharp satirical style and novels like London Fields have influenced a generation of writers.
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Martin Amis's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
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A wall of memorable lines from Martin Amis — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
If God Existed, and If He Cared for Humankind, He Would Never Have Given Us Religion.
Only in Art Will the Lion Lie Down with the Lamb, and the Rose Grow Without the Thorn.
Weapons Are Like Money: No One Knows the Meaning of Enough.
We Don’t Read Dickens for Little Nell and Esther Summerson; We Read Him for Quilp and Carker All the Villains and the Wags and the Eccentrics. That’s Where Dickens’ Energy Goes. to Channel Energy into a Good Character Is Very Difficult, and Not Very Many Writers Have Made Goodness, Happiness, the Positive, Work on the Page.
It’s Becoming Clearer and Clearer to Me That the World Is There to Be Celebrated by Writers, and in Fact This Is What All the Good Ones Do, and That the Great Fashion for Gloom and Grimness Was in Fact a False Path That Certain Writers Took, I Think in Response to the Horrors of the First Half of the Twentieth Century. Theodor Adorno’s Line, ‘No Poetry After Auschwitz’ Is in Fact Contradicted by Paul Celan, Who Was Writing Poetry in a Romanian Labour Camp.
Nabokov, Who Was Always a Very Good Guide in These Things, Was Convinced That the Way You Dealt with Extreme Villainy in Fiction Was Not to Punish It. Your Villain Is Not to Be Tritely Converted, as Dickens Tended to Do, but the Novelist’s Job Is Bitter Mockery, and That’s Part of How I’m Going at It.
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In 1979 in Paris, Martin Amis became the first writer to interview Roman Polanski after Polanski fled the United States in 1978 following charges of statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. The full interview was later reprinted in the Observer Film Magazine on December 6, 2009.
As a child, Martin Amis read almost nothing but science fiction until age fifteen or sixteen, causing his father Kingsley Amis to complain about his poor school performance. Determined to enter Oxford, he studied Latin and poetry, passed the entrance exam, and graduated from Exeter College with a first-class degree in English. He began working as a book reviewer for the London Observer in 1971, became an editorial assistant at the London Times Literary Supplement in 1972, and was promoted to fiction and poetry editor in 1974. He later held editorial roles at the New Statesman and the London Observer before becoming a full-time writer.
At age 15, Martin Amis was expelled from Sir Walter St John’s grammar school after taking four months off to act in the film A High Wind in Jamaica 1965.
In the 1970s, Martin Amis was the longtime companion of journalist and editor Tina Brown.
Martin Amis wrote a script for a new film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, but the project was ultimately scrapped.
A biography and bibliography of Martin Amis appears in Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, Vol. 132, pages 12-20, published by Thomson Gale in 2005.
Martin Amis was appointed Knight Bachelor in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours List for services to literature, with the honor scheduled to be awarded on May 18, 2023. He was a London-based author.
Critics frequently compared Martin Amis’s writing to that of Vladimir Nabokov and Saul Bellow.
Through his father’s marriage to novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, Martin Amis was her ex-stepson.
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