His wife says the famed novelist died at his home in Florida after battling esophageal cancer.
Renowned and influential British author Martin Amis has died at the age of 73 at his home in Lake Worth, Florida.
The author of inventive and insightful works such as Money: A Suicide Note, London Fields and Times Arrow died on Friday after a battle with esophageal cancer, his wife Isabel Fonseca told the media on Saturday.
The Booker Prize website said, “Amis was one of the most acclaimed and celebrated authors of the last 50 years and the author of 14 novels.”
In 2008, he was named one of the 50 best British writers since 1945 and twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Publisher Vintage Books said it was “devastated” by Amis’ death.
“He leaves an immense legacy and an indelible mark on the British cultural landscape, and will be greatly missed,” Vintage said on its Twitter account.
We are devastated by the death of our writer and friend Martin Amis. Our thoughts are with his entire family and loved ones, especially his children and wife Isabelle. He leaves an immense legacy and an indelible mark on the British cultural landscape, and will be greatly missed. pic.twitter.com/aFSg2u7MbJ
— Vintage Books (@vintagebooks) May 20, 2023
The author emerged as a literary figure in the 1980s, when British fiction boomed, bringing Amis to prominence alongside novelists including Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan.
It was with Money, published in 1984 with a comic take on consumerism, that Amis burst onto the literary scene more widely.
In addition to his novels, Amis published two collections of stories and eight works of nonfiction.
In 2008, The Times of London named the young Amis one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
In recent decades, Amis became a public intellectual, appearing frequently on television, sometimes with his longtime friend Christopher Hitchens, a British-American author and noted atheist who died in 2011.
In an essay around the fifth anniversary of 9/11, The Age of Terrorism, Amis wrote that moderate Islam had lost a civil war within the faith.
Amis expressed outrage and accusations of Islamophobia when he said in a 2006 interview: “There is a certain urgency to say, ‘The Muslim community will suffer unless it gets its house in order’.”
“Not allowing them to travel. Exile further down the road. Curtailing freedom… until it harms the whole community and they start being strict with their children,” he said.