Martin Amis author and his father, the novelist Kingsley Amis, the autobiography nevertheless deals with many facets of Amis's life. Of particular note is Amis's reunion with his daughter, Delilah Seale, resulting from an affair in the 1970s, whom he did not see until she was 19. Amis also discusses, at some length, the murder of his cousin Lucy Partington by Fred West when she was 21. The book was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography. In 2002 Amis published "", a devastating history of the crimes of Lenin and Stalin, and their denial by many writers and academics
Kingsley Amis a pattern which was the inverse of that of his close friend Philip Larkin. Before becoming known as a poet, Larkin had published two novels; Amis, on the other hand, originally wished to be a poet, and turned to writing novels only after publishing several volumes of verse. He continued throughout his career to write poetry, which is known for its typically straightforward and accessible style, yet often masks a nuance of thought, for example, in "Bookshop Idyll" or "Against Romanticism", just as it does in his novels. Amis's first novel, "Lucky Jim" (1954), is perhaps his most famous, satirizing