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.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Fast Forward Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown has ‘gone way too far’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.