London Fields
Published on 3. June 1999
Book
Paperback/Softback
544 pages
978-0-09-974861-8 (ISBN)
Description
Writer, Samson Young, is staring death in the face, and not only his own.
Void of ideas and on the verge of terminal decline, Samson's dash to a decaying, degenerate London has brought him through the doors of the Black Cross pub and into a murder story just waiting to be narrated.
At its centre is the mesmeric, doomed Nicola Six, destined to be murdered on her 35th birthday. Around her: the disreputable men who might yet turn out to be her killer. All Samson has to do is to write Nicola's story as it happens, and savour in this one last gift that life has granted him.
'A true story, a murder story, a love story and a thriller bursting with humour, sex and often dazzling language' Independent
Void of ideas and on the verge of terminal decline, Samson's dash to a decaying, degenerate London has brought him through the doors of the Black Cross pub and into a murder story just waiting to be narrated.
At its centre is the mesmeric, doomed Nicola Six, destined to be murdered on her 35th birthday. Around her: the disreputable men who might yet turn out to be her killer. All Samson has to do is to write Nicola's story as it happens, and savour in this one last gift that life has granted him.
'A true story, a murder story, a love story and a thriller bursting with humour, sex and often dazzling language' Independent
Reviews / Votes
A profound work, it's also the best novel ever written about pub darts. -- John Sutherland * The Times * I love reading novels about the city but this is my favourite. It manages to incorporate the seedy and the middle class Notting Hill side of the capital, all in one glorious unputdownable novel * Daily Express * 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 * A darkly comic web around her in a London rife with greed, deceit and desire * London Standard * 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 * 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 *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 199 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 38 mm
Weight
382 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-09-974861-8 (9780099748618)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Martin Amis
London Fields
A bold Booker-prize shortlisted state-of-the-nation novel about power, sex, and self-deception
E-Book
09/2010
1st Edition
Vintage Digital
€8.99
Available for download
Persons
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.