British author Martin Amis passed away at the age of 73

British author Martin Amis has died at the age of 73, according to his publishing house.

Dubbed ‘the predecessor of British letters’ Mick Jagger, Amis had a privileged background as the son of novelist Kingsley Amis. Yet he was drawn to the seedy underbelly of society.

Her publisher, Vintage Books, said that Amis had “defined what it meant to be a literary wunderkind”, influenced “a generation of prose stylists” and was known for “often encompassing entire eras with her books”. Was.,

He satirized the excesses of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain in one of his most famous works, Wealth – with its corrupt anti-hero John Self – and london grounds, He discovered the crimes of Lenin and Stalin koba the dreadand addressed the Holocaust in his 1991 novel arrow of timeAn account of a German doctor’s life in the Auschwitz death camp. He then returned to the subject in his 2014 novel area of ​​interest,

Vintage Books said in a statement: “We are devastated by the death of our author and friend.” He had been with the imprint since publishing his first novel. Rachel Peppers In 1973, at the age of 24.

Amis died of cancer of the esophagus Friday at his home in Florida, according to Amis’ agent Andrew Wylie, as reported by the AP.

Asked by the FT in 2013 about the writing process arrow of timehe said: “Writing is about freedom, and freedom is not divisible. And it makes no philosophical, and certainly no literary critical sense, to say that you stop at the gate to Auschwitz and you can’t go in.”

After moving from England to America, he said he missed “British wit”.

“British people are very tolerant and liberal, but they are funny. Americans are tolerant and liberal, but they are not – they are a little more honest, a little more dogmatic in their views,” he said.

Of the death of his close friend, fellow writer Christopher Hitchens – who had also died of esophageal cancer – he said: “His love of life was so intense that he would call upon his friends – and his wife – to increase his obligation.” Your love of life seems to have been transmitted to you. You feel you have to do it on his behalf.

Michael Shavit, his UK editor at Vintage Books, said: “It’s hard to imagine a world without Martin Amis. He was king – a stylistic extraordinaire, super cool, a brilliantly funny, scholarly and fearless writer.

Dan Franklin, her former UK editor, called Amis “the coolest, funniest, most quotable, most beautiful writer in the British literary sky”.

Additional reporting by AP