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Martin Amis

Martin Amis

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Martin Amis was the author of 14 novels, two collections of stories and eight works of non-fiction

Martin Amis was one of the most acclaimed and widely discussed novelists of his generation. The son of Kingsley Amis, who won the 1986 Booker Prize, he was twice nominated for the prize: Time’s Arrow was shortlisted in 1991, while Yellow Dog was longlisted in 2003. He won the Somerset Maugham Award for his debut novel, The Rachel Papers, in 1973, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir Experience. In 2008, the Times named him one of the 50 greatest writers since 1945. Amis’s other notable works include Money, London Fields and Dead Babies. A contemporary of Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro, Amis was part of an exciting and high-profile literary set that transformed the publishing landscape in the 1980s.

Born in Oxford, he spent his final years in the United States and died in May 2023. The day before his death, he was awarded a knighthood in the King’s first official birthday honours.

Read more on Martin Amis

Portrait of Martin Amis

Should Martin Amis have won the Booker Prize?

While the other members of his 1980s gang – Barnes, McEwan, Rushdie and Ishiguro – have all bagged a Booker and other awards, Amis remained relatively trophy-less. So why did the big literary prizes elude him?

All nominated books

Time's Arrow
Martin Amis’ inventive investigation of a war criminal, which reverses time as one man’s life races backward towards an appalling past
Yellow Dog
This dark, funny and relentlessly paced Martin Amis novel explores contemporary culture through a gallery of unique - and often unlovely - characters