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
Robin Amis published a number of works on the Orthodox tradition, including: The Eros of Repentance, The Path of Prayer, The Heart of Salvation: The Life and Teachings of Theophan the Recluse, and A Method of Prayer for Modern Times. Praxis also published an audio tape of sayings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, compiled by Palmer and read by Sergei (Kadloubovsky) Kadleigh. Amis’ initial visits to Mount Athos in turn led to his own conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy in 1983. Between 1987 and 1993, Amis and a small team that included Lillian Amis, Sergei Kadleigh and his wife Leslie,