Visiting Mrs. Nabokov

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A tantalizing collection of classic essays from one of the most gifted writers of his generation. • “The brainy, sarcastic, tender intelligence at the center of these pieces can make you laugh out loud: they can also move you to tears.” —People

Martin Amis brings the same megawatt wit, wickedly acute perception, and ebullient wordplay that characterize his novels. He encompasses the full range of contemporary politics and culture (high and low) while also traveling to China for soccer with Elton John and to London’s darts-crazy pubs in search of the perfect throw.

Throughout, he offers razor-sharp takes on such subjects as:

American politics: “If history is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake, then the Reagan era can be seen as an eight-year blackout. Numb, pale, unhealthily dreamless: eight years of Do Not Disturb.”

Chess: “Nowhere in sport, perhaps in human activity, is the gap between the tryer and the expert so astronomical…. My chances of a chess brilliancy are the ‘chances’ of a lab chimp and a type writer producing King Lear.”

“His fascination with the observable world is utterly promiscuous: he will address a cathedral and a toilet seat with the same peeled-eyeball intensity.” —John Updike”The brainy, sarcastic, tender intelligence at the center of these pieces can make you laugh out loud: they can also move you to tears.” —People

“His fascination with the observable world is utterly promiscuous: he will address a cathedral and a toilet seat with the same peeled-eyeball intensity.” —John UpdikeMARTIN AMIS is the author of 15 novels—among them Zone of Interest, London Fields, Time’s Arrow, The Information, and Night Train—along with the memoir Experience, the novelized self-portrait Inside Story, two collections of stories, and seven nonfiction books. He died in 2023.US

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