British author Martin Amis dead at 73, his publisher says
By Paradise Afshar and Ashley R. Williams, CNN
(CNN) — British author Martin Amis, best known for the 1984 novel, “Money,” and 1989’s “London Fields,” has died, his publisher Penguin Books UK announced Saturday. He was 73.
“(Amis) leaves a towering legacy and an indelible mark on the British cultural landscape, and will be missed enormously,” the British publishing house said on Twitter.
The author, who released his first novel, “The Rachel Papers,” when he was 24, died Friday, according to Penguin Books.
Amis’ wife, author Isabel Fonseca, told the New York Times that his cause of death was esophageal cancer.
CNN has reached out to Fonseca for comment.
Amis is survived by Fonesca and his children – Louis, Jacob, Fernanda, Clio and Delilah.
“For so many people of my generation, Martin Amis was the one: the coolest, funniest, most quotable, most beautiful writer in the British literary firmament,” his former editor, Dan Franklin, said in a Penguin statement announcing Amis’ death.
His publishing company remembered him as a “novelist, essayist, memoirist, critic and stylist supreme who, for 40 years, bestrode the world of UK publishing,” the statement said.
Amis was born August 25, 1949, in Oxford, England. He was the son of English novelist Kingsley Amis, according to Penguin.
As a writer engaged with current events and key historical moments, Amis’ work tackled big issues and questions, Penguin said, including “The Second Plane,” his collection of essays and stories about the events of September 11, 2001.
His 1991 novel, “Time’s Arrow,” and 2014’s “The Zone of Interest,” explored the Holocaust.
The graduate of Oxford University’s Exeter College served as a creative writing professor at the University of Manchester from 2007 to 2011, the publishing house said.
Amis’ accolades included the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir, “Experience,” and his writings were twice listed for the Booker Prize, including a shortlisting for “Time’s Arrow.”
His works “were noted for their dark, wry satire and inventiveness,” according to Penguin.
“It’s hard to imagine a world without Martin Amis in it,” his UK editor, Michal Shavit, said in Penguin’s statement. “He was the king – a stylist extraordinaire, super cool, a brilliantly witty, erudite and fearless writer and a truly wonderful man.”
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