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Kingsley Amis (1922) British novelist and poet. Amis has never done better in terms of sales or popularity than he did with Lucky Jim, his first novel. Lucky Jim, deriving from The Card by Arnold Bennett although set in an academic milieu, was infinitely the best of the so-called "angry young man" novels of its day; and is a splendid debunking of university pretentiousness. After more works in the same genre as Lucky Jim, Amis became interested in SF, in Ian Fleming's Bond and in more complex characterization. The Anti-Death League is his greatest achievement, since here he displays fine technique and deeper feeling; he allows his imagination to take control, and his prejudices are more evident. Since The Green Man (1969) he has experimented with more modernist techniques, and the results have been artistically disappointing since he is essentially a story teller. He conveys what is absurd very
well, but is much less sure in conveying his own warmth
Selected Books & Recommended Reading
Bright November
A Frame of Mind
Poems: Fantasy Portraits
Lucky Jim - the first novel
That Uncertain Feeling
A Case of Samples
I Like it Here
Take a Girl Like You
New Maps of Hell
My Enemy's Enemy
The Evans County
One Fat Englishman
The Egyptologists
The James Bond Dossier
The Book of Bond under the pseudonym Lt.-Col William Bill Tanner
The Anti Death League
Colonel Sun a James Bond novel as Robert Markham
I Want It Now
The Green Man
Kingsley Amis was born and
raised in London, England in a lower-middle class family. He attended a London
school before going to the prestigious St. John's College in Oxford. It
was there, along with many others that he joined the Communist Party. He
is quoted in a letter as saying: "most party members join without any knowledge, some, it is whispered, without any intelligence,"
He enlisted in the army with the Royal Corps of Signals, and rose
in the ranks to a second lieutenant. Whilst in service in Belgium and Germany, he
and a fellow soldier penned a novel, based on his affair with a married woman. After
returning to complete his education, he worked as a University lecturer
before writing full-time
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