Book Summary and Reviews of The War Against Cliche by Martin Amis

The War Against Cliche by Martin Amis

The War Against Cliche

Essays and Reviews 1971-2000

by Martin Amis

  • Published:
  • Jul 2002, 528 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"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.

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Author Information

Martin Amis Author Biography

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.

Link to Martin Amis's Website

Name Pronunciation
Martin Amis: AIM-is

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