Martin Amis Amis's work centres on the excesses of late-capitalist Western society, whose perceived absurdity he often satirises through grotesque caricature; he has been portrayed as a master of what "The New York Times" called "the new unpleasantness". Inspired by Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce, as well as by his father Kingsley Amis, Amis himself has gone on to influence many successful British novelists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including Will Self and Zadie Smith. Amis was born in Oxford, England. His father, noted English novelist Sir Kingsley Amis, was the son of a mustard manufacturer's clerk
Kingsley Amis was born on 16 April 1922 in Clapham, south London, the son of William Robert Amis, a mustard manufacturer's clerk in the City of London and his wife, Rosa Annie (née Lucas). He was raised in Norbury – in his later estimation "not really a place, it's an expression on a map [–] really I should say I came from Norbury station." He was educated at the City of London School on a scholarship, after his first year, and in April 1941 was admitted to St John's College, Oxford, also on a scholarship, where he read English. It was there