The Life Of Kingsley Amis By Zachary Leader (Us Hb)

By: FSWL team

Published:
2006-09-05

Publication of The Life of Kingsley Amis (US hardcover version) by Zachary Leader.

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Here is the authorized, definitive biography of one of the most controversial figures of twentieth-century literature, renowned for his blistering intelligence, savage wit and belligerent fierceness of opinion: Kingsley Amis was not only the finest comic novelist of his generation–having first achieved prominence with the publication of Lucky Jim in 1954 and as one of the Angry Young Men–but also a dominant figure in post—World War II British writing as novelist, poet, critic and polemicist.

In The Life of Kingsley Amis, Zachary Leader, acclaimed editor of The Letters of Kingsley Amis, draws not only on unpublished works and correspondence but also on interviews with a wide range of Amis’s friends, relatives, fellow writers, students and colleagues, many of whom have never spoken out before. The result is a compulsively readable account of Amis’s childhood, school days and life as a student at Oxford, teacher, critic, political and cultural commentator, professional author, husband, father and lover.

Even as he makes the case for Amis’s cultural centrality–at his death Time magazine claimed that “the British decades between 1955 and 1995 should in fairness be called ‘the Amis era’”–Leader explores the writer’s phobias, self-doubts and ambitions; the controversies in which he was embroiled; and the role that drink played in a life bedeviled by erotic entanglements, domestic turbulence and personal disaster.

Dazzling for its thoroughness, psychological acuity and elegant style, The Life of Kingsley Amis is exemplary: literary biography at its very best.

BOOK DETAILS:
Hardcover: 1008 pages
Publisher: Pantheon
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0375424989
ISBN-13: 978-0375424984
Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 2.1 inches

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Zachary Leader is a professor of English literature at Roehampton University in England. Among his books are studies of Romantic poetry and modern British fiction. Leader edited The Letters of Kingsley Amis.

REVIEWS:
"A detailed, intimate life of Amis as a friend, father, husband, wit, curmudgeon - and, above all, a writer."
-Observer

"This biography is in its way superb...Well-written and balanced."
-Evening Standard

"Unsurprisingly in a biography of this size, he really has left no stone unturned."
-Scotsman

"This is the best biography I have read for ages: deeply researched, crisply written and beautifully judged."
-Daily Telegraph

"Awe-inspiring research"
-Seven, The Sunday Telegraph

"Marvellous ... It's a pleasure to read, and the accumulation of detail gives a real sense of a life being led."
-Independent

"Few literary biographies can match it for depth and intimacy."
-Sunday Times

Order the US hardcover version of The Life of Kingsley Amis at a discounted price:

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375424989/fromswedenwit-20/

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#kingsley_amis_books

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