Deploying his own life story in the service of his most audacious work of fiction yet - and featuring some of the greatest literary and artistic figures of the twentieth century - Amis reimagines his past and the events that have shaped his life and work.
His most intimate and epic work to date, Inside Story is the unseen portrait of Martin Amis’ extraordinary life, as a man and a writer.
This novel had its birth in a death – that of the author's closest friend, Christopher Hitchens. We also encounter the vibrant characters who have helped define Martin Amis, from his father Kingsley, to his hero Saul Bellow, from Philip Larkin to Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Jane Howard, and to the person who captivated his twenties, the alluringly amoral Phoebe Phelps.
What begins as a thrilling tale of romantic entanglements, family and friendship, evolves into a tender, witty exploration of the hardest questions: how to live, how to grieve, and how to die?
In his search for answers, Amis surveys the great horrors of the twentieth century, and the still unfolding impact of the 9/11 attacks on the twenty-first – and what all this has taught him about how to be a writer. The result is one of Amis’ greatest achievements: a love letter to life that is at once exuberant, meditative, heartbreaking and ebullient, to be savoured and cherished for many years to come.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9781787332751
Number of pages: 560
Weight: 967 g
Dimensions: 240 x 162 x 48 mm
Warm, generous and deeply moving... This is not only the best book Amis has written in years; it is up there with Money and London Fields as the finest work he's produced. - Alex Preston, Observer
World-class talent... With the life-giving warmth of his brilliant, generous, sometimes unsparing critical writing... Martin Amis is my favorite living writer and Inside Story is his most beautiful book. - Richard A. Chance, New York Times
For my generation of fiction writers, Amis has become like a granite headland, a navigational marker for our collective endeavour. And here...are all the reasons we still love him... Inside Story gives us access to a turbulent, flawed but exceptional writing life. - Rose Tremain, New Statesman Books of the Year*
Another work of genius to remind us that he is the best... Amis writes better than anyone. What a book! - Susan Hill, Spectator Books of the Year*
One of Britain's greatest living writers... With each sumptuous sentence he proves his credentials... For fans of his work, Inside Story is a victory lap; newcomers will be steered towards his rich back catalogue. - Economist
The Mick Jagger of literature... Amis is the most dazzling prose stylist in post-war British fiction. - Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph
Amis's prose, as you should know by now, has a rush and a power that sweeps you along like surf: you're never going to get a sentence that isn't pulling its weight... The scene at Hitchens's deathbed affected me more than anything else I can remember reading. - Nicholas Lezard, Spectator
Inside Story gathers just about every weapon in the writer's armoury... Tender...corrosively witty...swaggeringly funny... It exhilarates. - Boyd Tonkin, i
Highly entertaining. - Emma Brockes, Guardian
Amis's nonpareil sentences brim with warmth, candour, soul... He has generously laid out this all-you-can-eat Amis buffet. Dig in. - Janice Turner, The Times
Amis returns to the 1970s and his escapades with his famous friends in a curious, pompous ‘novel’, shot through with tips on grammar
I have enjoyed a number of Martin Amis's novels and nonfiction, despite their pretensions. I have never read anything as self-regarding and puffed-up and indulgent as this book. It stinks of white privilege.
Men...
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In this autobiographical novel Martin Amis tells his story as a writer, lover, father and friend. It is his mediations on writing, literature, his relationship with his father, his love affairs and his hero worship to... More
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