Promotional Information

Amis on Stalin - a brilliant, controversial study by a great writer.

About the Author

Martin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century - in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience - he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023.

Reviews

A powerfully written, well-documented polemic reminding us of how 20 million humans were starved, murdered or totured to death by Uncle Joe
*Daily Mail*

More than any of his contemporaries, Amis writes things that you want to remember and repeat: he is original
*New Statesman*

Amis uses all the tricks of his well-mastered trade to make readable what is almost unreadable, indeed hardly bearable... A disturbing book...but a book I was very glad to have read
*Financial Times*

Martin Amis' book will not date...it is wise, witty and saturated with saeva indignatio, the only adequate response to tyranny
*Literary Review*

What's best about him is his style. He is never dull
*Sunday Times*

A powerfully written, well-documented polemic reminding us of how 20 million humans were starved, murdered or totured to death by Uncle Joe * Daily Mail *
More than any of his contemporaries, Amis writes things that you want to remember and repeat: he is original * New Statesman *
Amis uses all the tricks of his well-mastered trade to make readable what is almost unreadable, indeed hardly bearable... A disturbing book...but a book I was very glad to have read * Financial Times *
Martin Amis' book will not date...it is wise, witty and saturated with saeva indignatio, the only adequate response to tyranny * Literary Review *
What's best about him is his style. He is never dull -- John Carey * Sunday Times *

This passionate and intensely personal book by novelist Amis (London Fields) evokes a terrible crime, in fact several million crimes. Koba is Joseph Stalin, the 20 million his victims. Interwoven with his impressionistic narrative (which owes much to Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the Anglo-American historian Robert Conquest) are details of Amis's family history, along with his sparring with the memory of his late father, Kingsley, and a close friend, the English journalist Christopher Hitchens, both one-time defenders of Soviet rule. Amis cuts to and from these and other personalities, throwing in details of the appalling horrors of Stalinist misrule, in a kaleidoscopic narrative flow. Who was worse: the Little Mustache (Hitler) or the Big Mustache (Stalin)? Why is the latter's evil not as widely acknowledged as the former's? Amis concludes his book with a single family death, contrasting its pathos with, in Stalin's celebrated expression, the "mere statistic" of the death of millions. A personal and polemical reaction to human and historical tragedy on both a small and a large scale, this is not an easy read. While the book reveals nothing new historiographically, it will appeal to admirers of Amis's literary panache. Robert H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, ON Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.