Martin Amis needs no introduction to a lot of readers. With a knighted father (Sir Kingsley) and numerous well-loved novels under his belt, the name is synonymous with modern British literature.

At 60, Amis is a lecturer of creative writing at Manchester University, the United Kingdom, and has published 12 works of fiction, including The Rachel Papers (1973), Money (1984) and The London Fields (1989). His 13th novel, The Pregnant Widow, is due for release this month.

Weekend Review caught up with Amis before his forthcoming visit to Dubai for the 2010 Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature.

At first, Amis is less than forthcoming when questioned about The Pregnant Widow. What is evident, however, is although he says the Islamic theme in the novel is "minor", he has been outspoken on the issue in the past (somewhat controversially), indicating his interest in the "minor" theme.

A different perspective

The two Muslim characters in The Pregnant Widow make only brief appearances. Their presence — he says of the novel that focuses on the sexual revolution of a 1970s UK — shows that "Islam coexisted with everything else and was not considered the slightest bit threatening or unattractive or separatist. It was just a part of our lives, a perfectly pleasant part of our lives. I think it's worth remembering — when you think about what it's like now — there was no tension there in the West visibly, right up to 2001," he said via phone from London.

While he insists that the new novel is not biographical — and in fact it is one part of a novel that has now been split into two — some parts, he admits, do relate directly to his own life. Amis's sister Sally died at the age of 46. Islam, Amis said, might have been able to "save her".

"I think only a very demanding religion such as Islam, an austere religion, could have saved her. She was a very special case and I can't think of any other society, any other social system that she could have survived in."

On the topic of Islam, Amis continued that 95 per cent of Muslims in the UK "are extremely embarrassed by extremism, probably more so than in America. But the extremists do always have the energy — the extreme wing has the ability to silence the moderates."

The author has stirred up controversy in his past, being labelled by critics as Islamaphobic and misogynist. However, he says, The Pregnant Widow is a feminist novel "and I'm a passionate feminist".

In the novel women are perceived through male eyes. The narrator is a male who focuses on sexual freedom and exploration in the era of the feminist revolution. "Of course, if you want to take offence, there'll be plenty to take offence at," Amis replied when asked if his work is sexist, "but there is no agenda for sexism in that book." He says he makes it clear in the book that all the difficult choices fell on women in [the] revolution, that it asked nothing of men: "It was a test, a challenge to women, not to men. They had all the difficulties of adaptation."

Amis is inspired ("I wouldn't say influenced") by writers Saul Bellow (who wrote social realist novels) and Vladimir Nabokov (famous for Lolita). Amis himself writes social realist novels, so what is it that interests him about the baseness of human beings? "Human beings are so strange," he said, adding that it is "tremendously difficult, thrillingly difficult to write about humans. Bold, fantastic novels have a very low success rate — social realism is IT, really."

Importance of comedy

Comedy, and a comedic strain to any writing, is important for the long-time author. He cites Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare and George Eliot as writers who utilised comedy in their work. No one, he said, reads the gloomy writer from the 20th century. The others, he continues, "have a wit and a gaiety that I value", adding that Milton is an exception, being "utterly humourless".

As mentioned, The Pregnant Widow was once part of a novel that Amis has now split into two. The second will focus on Saul Bellow, Philip Larkin and Ian Hamilton, because "I knew them all", he said.

This will form a more autobiographical book. For Amis, it is impossible to write autobiographical fiction about sexual matters or autobiographical classical fiction about anything. Bellow, he says, "was the only person who got anywhere with it and he was unique".

For anyone with an already famous literary father, growing up in his shadow must have been difficult. In his youth, Kingsley Amis was a communist until the age of 30, when he turned anti-communist.

Amis claims to hold no ideology, in contradiction to his father: "My ideology is to have no ideology". Isn't this, I asked, tantamount to holding an ideology? "No," he replied, "it's another way of saying my mind is independent."

 

Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature is on at the Dubai Festival city from March 10-13.