-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Essays and Reviews 1971-2000
by Martin Amis
Here, Amis serves up fresh assessments of the classics and plucks neglected masterpieces off their dusty shelves.
Above all, Amis is concerned with literature, and with the deadly cliches—not only of the pen, but of the mind and the heart.
He tilts with Cervantes, Dickens and Milton, celebrates Bellow, Updike and Elmore Leonard, and deflates some of the most bloated reputations of the past three decades. On every page Amis writes with jaw-dropping felicity, wit, and a subversive brilliance that sheds new light on everything he touches.
"Irresistible... . The man's a genius with words... . Whatever Amis has to say about a book or a writer seems just right--and lip smackingly phrased." —The Washington Post
"Brilliant prose... .[Amis] proselytizes for talent by demonstrating it, by doing it... . He is a master." —The New York Times Book Review
"Whatever the book, there is no one whose review of it you'd rather read than Amis's. His prose is always buzzing, so much so that he doesn't just review books, he rewrites them." —San Francisco Chronicle
"[Written] with intelligence and ardor and panache... . Speaks not just to a lifetime of reading but also to a fascination with individual writers mature." —The New York Times
This information about The War Against Cliche was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Isabel Fonseca
Martin Amis was the author of fourteen novels, two collections of stories and eight works of non-fiction. His novel Time's Arrow was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for which his subsequent novel Yellow Dog was also longlisted, and his memoir Experience won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest writers since 1945. Amis died in May 2023.
Name Pronunciation
Martin Amis: AIM-is
If you liked The War Against Cliche, try these:
by Tom Rachman
Published 2011
Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Rome, Tom Rachman’s wry, vibrant debut follows the topsy-turvy private lives of the reporters, editors, and executives of an international English language newspaper as they struggle to keep it—and themselves—afloat.
by Greg Iles
Published 2006
'The job of great fiction is to entertain, elucidate and educate while keeping readers nailed to their chairs; this does all of that brilliantly.'
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
by David Sedaris
Published 2005
Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface in another unforgettable collection from one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
