Martin Amis is one of the most important contemporary British authors. His most famous books include “Greedy” and “London Fields”. He also provided the basis for a film running in Cannes.
The British author Martin Amis died at the age of 73
British writer Martin Amis died on Friday at the age of 73, according to the book publisher Penguin Random House UK. The Booker Prize website and the New York Times also report on his death. The latter refers to Amis' wife, the American writer Isabel Fonseca, with whom he lived in the US state of Florida. Amis died of complications from esophageal cancer.
He was considered one of the most important contemporary British writers. In an obituary, Penguin Random House described the author as a “literary prodigy” who published his debut novel at the age of 24. The British newspaper “Times” honored him as a “giant of literature” and the “Guardian” praised that Americans shaped an era. Editor Michal Shavit recognized Amis as a “brilliantly funny” and “fearless” writer.
Martin Ami's literary work
Born in 1949, the son of comic book author Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) studied English at Oxford University. He celebrated his literary breakthrough with the novel “The Rachel Diary” (1973). He was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize for it. He rose to even greater prominence in the 1980s, when British fiction was booming. His colleagues at the time included authors such as Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan.
Martin Amis' novel Time's Arrow was shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize
His most famous works include “Greedy” (1984) and “London Fields” (1989). With a sharp pen he described the absurdities of our time. In 1991 he was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the UK's top award for English language novels. In 2003 he was longlisted. Amis is the author of 14 novels and several non-fiction books. Most recently, he released “Inside Story” in 2020.
The film “The Zone of Interest” is currently showing in Cannes
In 2015 his novel “Interessengebiet” (originally: “The Zone of Interest”) was published in Germany. In it, Amis describes the attempt at an affair in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The book, which had been published in English a year earlier and received a mostly positive reception from the British press, caused controversy in Germany. The Hanser publishing house, which otherwise brings Amis' books onto the German market, rejected it.
According to an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Alexander Menden suspected the reason for the rejection not to be the concentration camp topic, but in the language used. It is a mix of German and English. In the end, the Swiss publishers, None and But, jumped in. Amis' novel was a source of inspiration for Jonathan Glazer's film of the same name, which is currently in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Glazer's “The Zone of Interest” takes place in front of the wall of Auschwitz in an apparent idyll. Festival watchers see him as a week one favourite.