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
B. D. Amis B. D. Amis B. D. Amis (Benjamin DeWayne Amis; 7 July 1896 – 9 June 1993) was an African American labor organizer and civil rights leader. Particularly influential in the fight for African Americans' and workers during the period of official segregation in the South and informal discrimination throughout the country, Amis is most remembered for his militant Communist activism on behalf of the notable legal cases of the falsely-accused Scottsboro Boys, the African American organizer Angelo Herndon, as well as the white labor leader Tom Mooney. Born Benjamin DeWayne Amis in Chicago, Illinois in 1896, Amis went by B.D.