Promotional Information

'A true story, a murder story, a love story and a thriller bursting with humour, sex and often dazzling language' Independent

About the Author

Martin Amis is the author of fourteen novels, two collections of stories and eight works of non-fiction. His novel Time's Arrow was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for which his subsequent novel Yellow Dog was also longlisted, and his memoir Experience won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest writers since 1945. He lives in New York.

Reviews

In this very British tale, femme fatale Nicola Six manipulates racist, sexist scoundrel Keith Talent and well-mannered, naive Guy Clinch as an omniscient narrator/novelist spies on the trio in order to develop his book. ``Relentlessly bitter, often brutally funny, hypnotically readable, it may also be quite opaque in places to an American readership,'' said PW. Author tour. (Apr.)

Amis's (www.martinamisweb.com) darkly comic look at late 20th-century London and the despairing state of Western civilization was originally published in 1989 and is newly available on audio (the only other recording, on audiocassette, is no longer available). At the book's center are failed criminal/aspiring professional darts player Keith Talent; Guy Clinch, a rich, bored banker; Guy's son, Marmaduke, arguably the most horrendous infant in all of literature; Nicola Six, a party girl with a death wish; and the unreliable narrator, Sam Young, an American with writer's block. As these and assorted other colorful characters interact, Amis considers the not-always-fulfilled allures of love and fame. Adopting a gruff American accent, British actor Steven Pacey captures Sam's fascination with the characters' blunders and his barely concealed desire to manipulate their fates. This superb audio treatment of a great novel will appeal to those who enjoy serious fiction that attempts to encompass societal woes without being didactic. Darts fans may also be amused.-Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr. Lib. (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A profound work, it's also the best novel ever written about pub darts. -- John Sutherland * The Times *
Martin Amis's most ambitious, intelligent and nourishing novel to date... Keith Talent is a brilliant comic creation...as a fictional minor crook, he is in the major league, lying and cheating on the scale of Greene's Pinkie Brown and Saul Bellow's Rinaldo Cantabile * Observer *
An electrifying writer who likes to shock his fans and share his sharply contemporary concerns... Amis is a maddening master you need to read - the best of his generation * Mail on Sunday *
London Fields, its pastoral title savagely inappropriate to its inner-city setting, vibrates, like all Amis's work, with the force fields of sinister, destructive energies. At the core of its surreal fable are four figures locked in lethal alignment * Sunday Times *