Acclaimed author Martin Amis has died aged 73. The novelist and screenwriter published a series of novels and non-fiction works over his lifetime, with his best-known arguably being 1984’s Money and 1989’s London Fields.
He died from cancer of the oesophagus at his home in Florida, his agent Andrew Wylie told the AP news agency.
In a statement to the PA news agency, Vintage Books said: "We are devastated at the death of our author and friend, Martin Amis: novelist, essayist, memoirist, critic, stylist supreme. It has been a profound privilege and pleasure to be his publisher; first as Jonathan Cape in 1973, with his explosive debut, The Rachel Papers; then as part of Penguin Random House and Vintage, up to and including his most recent book, 2020’s Inside Story."
His novel Time’s Arrow was shortlisted for the Booker Prize while his 2003 novel Yellow Dog was also longlisted.
Amis' father, Kingsley, moved to Swansea in 1949 to work in the university's English department when Martin was just a couple of months old, and he spent much of his childhood in the city attending Bishop Gore School in Sketty. In Richard Bradford’s 2011 biography of the author he fondly remembers childhood trips to the Mumbles, playing cricket on the beach, going to the cinema, and growing up in the Uplands area. He says: “Everything just seemed as it was, good. Down the road there was a park, Cwmdonkin park – yes Dylan Thomas’ house was close by but I didn’t know that then, and groups of us would just play there, make up games, climb trees. Sometimes there’d be fights but no one seemed to get hurt.”
He also recalled how on one occasion he and his brother Philip had planned to canoe from Swansea Bay to Pembroke Bay, but neither of the boys had checked the distance or weather conditions. He says: "The Swansea Evening Post eventually reported that my act of heroism, getting ashore and summoning the coastguard, had saved my brother’s life. Actually he’d paddled back before I’d been washed up on the beach and was drinking Tango in a seafront café trying to remember our home phone number while the coastguards scoured the area."
The Amis family left Swansea in 1961 when Kingsley - by then a renowned author - became a fellow of Peterhouse college in Cambridge.
The official Twitter account of The Booker Prize described him as "one of the most acclaimed and discussed novelists of the past 50 years" following the news.
"We are saddened to hear that Martin Amis, one of the most acclaimed and discussed novelists of the past 50 years, has died", they tweeted. "Our thoughts are with his family and friends."
Amis' UK editor, Michal Shavit, said: "It’s hard to imagine a world without Martin Amis in it. He was the king – a stylist extraordinaire, super cool, a brilliantly witty, erudite and fearless writer, and a truly wonderful man. He has been so important and formative for so many readers and writers over the last half century. Every time he published a new book it was an event.
"He will be remembered as one of the greatest writers of his time and his books will stand the test of time alongside some of his favourite writers: Saul Bellow, John Updike, and Vladimir Nabokov."
Amis is survived by his wife, writer Isabel Fonseca, and his children Louis, Jacob, Fernanda, Clio and Delilah.
