Il protagonista di questa bruciante confessione non può proprio definirsi un eroe: è un uomo istintivo e violento, che durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale 'si è fatto strada in quella che sarebbe stata chiamata Germania Est a suon di stupri', ma allo stesso tempo è un individuo capace di grandi slanci emotivi e dotato di una sensibilità che può solo definirsi 'tipicamente russa'. Ormai è vecchio e l'antica autoindulgenza ha lasciato il posto al rimorso e all'amarezza: decide di tornare in patria - da cui era fuggito vent'anni prima - e intraprendere un ultimo disperato viaggio attraverso la Siberia, nei luoghi che lo videro internato in un gulag da dopo la guerra fino al mutamento del clima politico successivo alla morte di Stalin. Le giornate al suo interno sono scandite da un implacabile calendario di violenze: nel campo la vita nuda si rivela in tutta la sua crudeltà e quell'esperimento chiamato Unione Sovietica viene a reclamare il suo costo in vite umane. A Norlag, un inferno artico 'poco sopra il sessantanovesimo parallelo', è rinchiuso anche il fratellastro del narratore, Lev. A dividerli non sono solo le inclinazioni Lev è un poeta e un pacifista - ma anche l'amore di Zoya, una giovane ragazza ebrea, bellissima e sensuale, che con la sua scelta decide il destino dei due uomini.

An extraordinary, harrowing, endlessly surprising novel from a literary master.

In 1946, two brothers and a Jewish girl fall into alignment in pogrom-poised Moscow. The fraternal conflict then marinates in Norlag, a slave-labor camp above the Arctic Circle, where a tryst in the coveted House of Meetings will haunt all three lovers long after the brothers are released. And for the narrator, the sole survivor, the reverberations continue into the new century.

he first new title from Amis in three years, this was chosen as Book Of The Year by Lionel Shriver, Geordie Grieg and Adam Mars-Jones on its hardback publication. Centring on a love triangle played out in Moscow and the Stalinist slave camps,

Richard Tull e Gwyn Barry sono amici, compagni di università, entrambi scrittori. Ma Gwyn è uno scrittore di successo, Richard un fallito. Eppure era partito meglio dell'amico, aveva pubblicato un libro apprezzato dai critici ed era considerato una promessa. Ma Richard si nutre di odio: odio verso l'amico, invidia per il suo successo. Non solo sete di vendetta, ma desiderio di umiliare Gwyn sullo stesso terreno in cui egli stesso è stato umiliato. Su tutto e tutti regna 'l'informazione', la massa di notizie che ci sommerge e ci rende spettatori irrequieti e invidiosi dei successi altrui.

Quando il 'marito da sogno' Xan Meo viene aggredito per vendetta in un pub londinese, insieme al trauma cranico porta a casa disturbi della personalità e un'idea fissa: il sesso. Con la determinazione del neofita, il modello di virtù famigliari diventa un anti-marito e anti-padre. Veniamo introdotti nei mondi capovolti di Clint Smoker, il giornalista che si firma 'Cane Giallo', schiavo del Viagra; Joseph Andrews, il malavitoso che crede di essere un personaggio di Henry Fielding; e Royce Traynor, un cadavere che cerca, persino da morto, di far precipitare l'aereo su cui viaggia la moglie. Nel frattempo, esploriamo le disavventure di una famiglia reale allo sbando: un Enrico IX ricattato perché la figlia è stata filmata in pose compromettenti.

A collection of essays on America by Martin Amis, who has interviewed its literati, filmakers, thinkers, opinion makers, leaders and crackpots with characteristic discernment and wit.

Inventive, and thrillingly savage, a tale of a life lived without restraint, of money and the terrible things it can do and the disasters it can precipitate.

Brilliant, painful, dazzling, and funny as hell, Yellow Dog is Martin Amis' highly anticipated first novel in seven years and a stunning return to the fictional form.

When “dream husband” Xan Meo is vengefully assaulted in the garden of a London pub, he suffers head injury, and personality change. Like a spiritual convert, the familial paragon becomes an anti-husband, an anti-father. He submits to an alien moral system -- one among many to be found in these pages. We are introduced to the inverted worlds of the “yellow” journalist, Clint Smoker; the high priest of hardmen, Joseph Andrews; and the porno tycoon, Cora Susan. Meanwhile, we explore the entanglements of Henry England: his incapacitated wife, Pamela; his Chinese mistress, He Zhezun; his fifteen-year-old daughter, Victoria, the victim of a filmed “intrusion” that rivets the world -- because she is the future Queen of England, and her father, Henry IX, is its King. The connections between these characters provide the pattern and drive of Yellow Dog.

If, in the 21st century, the moral reality is changing, then the novel is changing too, whether it likes it or not. Yellow Dog is a model of how the novel, or more particularly the comic novel, can respond to this transformation.

But Martin Amis is also concerned here with what is changeless and perhaps unchangeable. Patriarchy, and the entire edifice of masculinity; the enormous category-error of violence, arising between man and man; the tortuous alliances between men and women; and the vanished dream (probably always an illusion, but now a clear delusion) that we can protect our future and our progeny.

Meo heard no footsteps; what he heard was the swish, the shingly soft-shoe of the hefted sap. Then the sharp two-finger prod on his shoulder. It wasn't meant to happen like this. They expected him to turn and he didn't turn -- he half-turned, then veered and ducked. So the blow intended merely to break his cheekbone or his jawbone was instead received by the cranium, that spacey bulge (in this instance still quite marriageably forested) where so many delicate and important powers are so trustingly encased.

He crashed, he crunched to his knees, in obliterating defeat. . . . -- from Yellow Dog


From the Hardcover edition.

Non come storico, né come romanziere, bensì come figlio di un esponente del partito comunista inglese negli anni Quaranta, che poi rinnegò la propria ideologia comunista, Martin Amis si chiede perché molti intellettuali ora ridano della loro infatuazione per il regime stalinista, in un modo che nessuno dai trascorsi nazisti si permetterebbe. È questa la risposta che gli preme trovare nelle pagine del libro, dove al racconto degli orrori compiuti in Russia si alternano ricordi personali di vita domestica in un libro che non è un pamphlet politico, ma un esame di coscienza dai risvolti polemici.

Humorous novel about the antics of a group of people over the course of a weekend.

A cleverly written story, narrated by two brothers, of despair and the male psyche.

Paperback edition of the hilarious comic novel. It examines the changing nature of moral reality, with a cast of eclectic characters in a post 9/11 world. Received rave reviews in hardback. 'As clever and convincing as ever' }Sunday Telegraph{

Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the great modern writers presented in attractive, accessible paperback editions.

“Amis throws off more provocative ideas and images in a single paragraph than most writers get into complete novels.” —The Seattle Times

Equally at home in satirical novels and biting critical essays, wickedly funny short stories and intimate autobiography, Martin Amis is widely regarded as one of the most influential yet inimitable voices in contemporary fiction, a writer whose prose captures the warp-speed rush of modernity.

Vintage Amis displays this versatility in an excerpt from the author's award-winning memoir, Experience; the “Horrorday” chapter from London Fields; a vignette from his novel Money; the stories “State of England,” “Insight at Flam Lake,” and “Coincidence of the Arts”; and the essays “Visiting Mrs. Nabokov,” “Phantom of the Opera.”

Also included, for the first time in book form, the short story “Porno's Last Summer.”

Richard Tull e Gwyn Barry sono amici, compagni di università, entrambi scrittori. Ma Gwyn è uno scrittore di successo, Richard un fallito. Eppure era partito meglio dell'amico, aveva pubblicato un libro apprezzato dai critici ed era considerato una promessa. Ma Richard si nutre di odio: odio verso l'amico, invidia per il suo successo. Non solo sete di vendetta, ma desiderio di umiliare Gwyn sullo stesso terreno in cui egli stesso è stato umiliato. Su tutto e tutti regna 'l'informazione', la massa di notizie che ci sommerge e ci rende spettatori irrequieti e invidiosi dei successi altrui.

A brilliant weave of personal involvement, vivid biography and political insight, Koba the Dread is the successor to Martin Amis's award-winning memoir, Experience.

Koba the Dread captures the appeal of one of the most powerful belief systems of the 20th century — one that spread through the world, both captivating it and staining it red. It addresses itself to the central lacuna of 20th-century thought: the indulgence of Communism by the intellectuals of the West. In between the personal beginnings and the personal ending, Amis gives us perhaps the best one-hundred pages ever written about Stalin: Koba the Dread, Iosif the Terrible.

The author's father, Kingsley Amis, though later reactionary in tendency, was a “Comintern dogsbody” (as he would come to put it) from 1941 to 1956. His second-closest, and then his closest friend (after the death of the poet Philip Larkin), was Robert Conquest, our leading Sovietologist whose book of 1968, The Great Terror, was second only to Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago in undermining the USSR. The present memoir explores these connections.

Stalin said that the death of one person was tragic, the death of a million a mere “statistic.” Koba the Dread, during whose course the author absorbs a particular, a familial death, is a rebuttal of Stalin's aphorism.


From the Hardcover edition.

Two further backlist Amis titles available for the first time in Vintage paperback.

Non come storico, né come romanziere, bensì come figlio di un esponente del partito comunista inglese negli anni Quaranta, che poi rinnegò la propria ideologia comunista, Martin Amis si chiede perché molti intellettuali ora ridano della loro infatuazione per il regime stalinista, in un modo che nessuno dai trascorsi nazisti si permetterebbe. È questa la risposta che gli preme trovare nelle pagine del libro, dove al racconto degli orrori compiuti in Russia si alternano ricordi personali di vita domestica in un libro che non è un pamphlet politico, ma un esame di coscienza dai risvolti polemici.

Is there anything that Martin Amis can't write about? In this virtuosic, career-spanning collection he takes on James Joyce and Elvis Presley, Nabokov and English football, Jane Austen and Penthouse Forum, William Burroughs and Hillary Clinton. But above all, Amis is concerned with literature, and with the deadly cliches–not only of the pen, but of the mind and the heart.

In The War Against Cliché, Amis serves up fresh assessments of the classics and plucks neglected masterpieces off their dusty shelves. 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.

A selection of writing spanning the past quarter-century, including pieces on Milton, Jane Austen, Nabokov and John Updike as well as Margaret Thatcher and Andy Warhol. The hardback edition was published to huge acclaim and his biography, }Expe

Martin Amis, figlio dello scrittore Kingsley Amis, si misura in questo libro con la prova autobiografica e mette in mostra le sua ossessioni, intrecciandole con i propri ricordi: il problematico rapporto con il padre scrittore, la rovina del matrimonio dei genitori e del suo, una figlia ventenne riconosciuta da poco, la recente scoperta che una cugina, scomparsa nel '73, cadde vittima di un maniaco, l'attenzione della stampa, la carriera letteraria...

Martin Amis is one of the most gifted and innovative writers of our time. With Experience, he discloses a private life every bit as unique and fascinating as his bestselling novels.

The son of the great comic novelist Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis explores his relationship with this father and writes about the various crises of Kingsley's life. He also examines the life and legacy of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who was abducted and murdered by one of Britain's most notorious serial killers. Experience also deconstructs the changing literary scene, including Amis' portraits of Saul Bellow, Salman Rushdie, Allan Bloom, Philip Larkin, and Robert Graves, among others. Not since Nabokov's Speak, Memory has such an implausible life been recorded by such an inimitable talent. Profound, witty, and ruthlessly honest, Experience is a literary event.

Vintage paperback edition of Amis's autobiography, in which he explores his relationship with his father and the murder of his cousin by Fred West, recounts a wealth of anecdotes, and provides portraits of fellow authors such as Saul Bellow, Ph

"Martin Amis is a stone-solid genius...a dazzling star of wit and insight." --The Wall Street Journal

In this wickedly delightful collection of stories, Martin Amis once again demonstrates why he is a modern master of the form. In "Career Move," screenwriters struggle for their art, while poets are the darlings of Hollywood. In "Straight Fiction," the love that dare not speak its name calls out to the hero when he encounters a forbidden object of desire--the opposite sex. And in "State of England," Mal, a former "minder to the superstars," discovers how to live in a country where "class and race and gender were supposedly gone."

In Heavy Water and Other Stories, Amis astonishes us with the vast range of his talent, establishing that he is one of the most versatile and gifted writers of his generation.

Tutti i nove racconti narrano di mondi rovesciati o fantascientifici. Poeti ricchissimi volano in business class dall'Europa a Los Angeles, terra di potenti 'majors' poetiche che li coprono di denaro e mettono al loro servizio stuoli di collaboratori. Invece, gli sceneggiatori, avvinazzati e misconosciuti, si ritrovano nottetempo nei bassifondi della città per tenere clandestine letture dei loro lavori. In un futuro non lontano il mondo potrebbe essere popolato per la maggioranza da omosessuali e gli etero, orgogliosi al limite dell'arroganza, sceglierebbero sempre più l'outing. Mondi nascosti eppure quanto mai veritieri scritti con umorismo crudele e dissacrante.

Acclaimed collection of short stories. 'Crackling prose...' }The Times{. 'This volume is essential reading for anyone remotely interested in where we are and how we got here' }Sunday Times. Night Train{ was Amis' last novel.

Detective Mike Hoolihan has seen it all. A fifteen-year veteran of the force, she's gone from walking a beat, to robbery, to homicide. But one case--this case--has gotten under her skin.

When Jennifer Rockwell, darling of the community and daughter of a respected career cop--now top brass--takes her own life, no one is prepared to believe it. Especially her father, Colonel Tom. Homicide Detective Mike Hoolihan, longtime colleague and friend of Colonel Tom, is ready to "put the case down." Suicide. Closed. Until Colonel Tom asks her to do the one thing any grieving father would ask: take a second look.

Not since his celebrated novel Money has Amis turned his focus on America to such remarkable effect. Fusing brilliant wordplay with all the elements of a classic whodunit, Amis exposes a world where surfaces are suspect (no matter how perfect), where paranoia is justified (no matter how pervasive), and where power and pride are brought low by the hidden recesses of our humanity.

Proposto fin dall'inizio come il messaggio di un suicida, il romanzo ha come protagonista John Self, un trentacinquenne 'drogato di ventesimo secolo', regista di spot pubblicitari, alle prese con il suo primo lungometraggio: 'Money'. John Self muove il suo corpo ingombrante, viziato da eccessi alimentari e alcolici, in una New York dominata dall'efficientismo caotico del successo e dei soldi. Ma la sua inadeguatezza alle regole della Grande Mela non è il solo problema di Self: ossessionato dalla certezza dell'infedeltà di Selina, la sua amante di Londra, la tempesta di telefonate, ed è a sua volta tormentato dalle chiamate di un molestatore misterioso.