He gained a formal first in English at Exeter College, Oxford. After leaving Oxford, Amis began working on the editorial staff of the
London Times Literary Supplement. At age twenty-four he won the Somerset Maugham Award for his first novel,
The Rachel Papers (1973). Amis wrote numerous articles and gained the prestigious literary editorship of the
New Statesman. During the 1970s he wrote two other novels,
Dead Babies (1975) and
Success (1978), and he also wrote three screenplays. However, only one,
Saturn 3, has actually been produced. His latest novel,
Other People, was published in March 1981.
Currently, Amis works as a staff writer and reviewer for the London Observer. Much of his work involves traveling to the United States to do research on aspects of American life for feature essays that appeal to the British sense of humor. Norman Mailer and born-again Christianity have been among his latest subjects. Amis lives in a small flat near Queensway in the Kensington section of London, and much of his fiction centers on this area. The influx of foreigners and London's increasing cosmopolitanism, especially in the Queensway area, are commented on gloomily by Amis's characters, who reveal the alienation and rootlessness felt by many Londoners.
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