Martin Amis Announces New ‘Autobiographical Novel’ Featuring Saul Bellow & Christopher Hitchens
Image by Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images
Author Martin Amis, perhaps best known for his (in)famous Holocaust novel, “Time’s Arrow,” announced in a recent interview with livemint.com that he is working on an autobiographical novel that he has “been trying to write for 15 years.” Despite calling the novel autobiographical, Amis stated that the book will be less about him than about three other writers – Saul Bellow, Christopher Hitchens, and Phillip Larkin.
Amis had personal relationships with all three authors – he has described Bellow as his “hero and mentor,” and was friends with both Larkin and Hitchens. Since Amis began the book, all three authors have died – Larkin in 1985, Bellow in 2005, Hitchens in 2011. In the livemint.com interview, Amis told interviewer Tishani Doshi that the passing of his friends “gives me a theme, death, and it gives me a bit more freedom. “It’s hard going,” he said, “but the one benefit is that I have the freedom to invent things. I don’t have them looking over my shoulder anymore.”
Martin Amis, though not Jewish, has declared himself to be a “philo-semite,” that is, someone with a love of Jews. Incidentally (or maybe not so incidentally), two of the three authors, Bellow and Hitchens, who will appear in his new book, are Jewish, though Hitchens came to this realization quite late in life.
The novel still does not yet have a title or a release date, but Amis does have a new book of essays, “The Rub of Time,” which will also feature Bellow and Hitchens, forthcoming in 2017 from published Jonathan Cape.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
