"Wit and talent and mordant perception ... Martin Amis is surely by far the most interesting of the new English writers," proclaims Dennis Potter on the dust jacket of Amis's latest novel Other People (1981), and certainly Amis is one of the most talked about figures on the London literary scene today. At the age of thirty-two he has already written four popular novels along with a succession of journalistic pieces. According to novelist Francis King, Amis "is going to leave the novel, however marginally, different from how he found it."

Martin Amis was born in Oxford, England, the son of well-known author Kingsley Amis and Hilary Bardwell Amis. Martin attended schools in Britain, Spain, and the United States as he was growing up. In all, he was enrolled in more than thirteen schools and then a series of "crammers" in London and Brighton to prepare for university entrance examinations...