Martin Amis Biography
Martin Amis, son of writer Kingsley Amis (Lucky Jim etc), was born
Martin Louis Amis in
Cardiff on August 25, 1949. He is the middle of three children (an older
brother Philip and younger sister, Sally, who died in 2000). His parents,
Hilary (Hilly) and Kingsley,
divorced when he was twelve.
He was educated in schools in Wales, England, Spain and the USA (while his
father lectured at Princeton), and graduated from Exeter College, Oxford, with
First Class Honours in English. His first novel, The Rachel Papers, was
published in 1973 while he was working an editorial assistant at the Times
Literary Supplement. It won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1974. In 1975 he
published Dead Babies, followed by Success in 1978, written while
he was Literary Editor of the New Statesman (1977-79).
His work has been heavily influenced by American fiction, especially the work of
Philip Roth, John Updike and Saul Bellow, and also by Russian writers such as
Vladimir Nabokov. He is considered to be one of the most influential and
innovative voices in contemporary British fiction, and is sometimes grouped with
other British-based writers who emerged in the 1980s such as Salman Rushdie, Ian
McEwan and Julian Barnes.
He is a regular contributor to many newspapers,
magazines and journals, including the Sunday Times, The Observer, the Times
Literary Supplement and the New York Times.
In 1984 he married Antonia Phillips, with whom he has two sons, Louis (1985) and
Jacob (1986). Their marriage broke down in 1993 and in 1996 he married
Isabel Fonseca, with whom he has two daughters, Fernanda (1997) and Clio (1999).
He has another daughter who he met for the first time in 1996, Delilah Seale
(born ~1975), from an affair with Lamorna Heath.
He lives in London and Uruguay, with his wife and daughters.
Partial Bibliography
Novels
- The Rachel Papers (1973)
- Dead Babies (1975)
aka Dark Secrets
- Success (1978)
- Other People (1981)
- Money: A Suicide Note (1984)
- London Fields (1989)
- Time's Arrow: Or the Nature of the Offense (1991)
- The Information (1995)
- Yellow Dog (2003)
- The Pregnant Widow (2007)
Non fiction
- Invasion of the Space Invaders (1982)
- The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America (1986)
- Experience (2000, memoir)
- The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews, 1971-2000 (2001)
- Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (2002)
- Pornoland (2004)
This biography was last updated on 02/05/2007.
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