The Zone of Interest, a film inspired by late novelist Martin Amis' novel, received a rapturous ovation at Cannes 2023

Novelist and screenwriter, Martin Amis passed away in Florida on Friday. He was 73. Amis was battling oesophagal cancer. Born to a famous novelist, Sir Kingsley ‘Lucky Jim’ Amis took in his father’s footsteps and wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973), which won him Somerset Maugham Award the following year. He is best known for his novels Money (1984) and London Fields (1989), and for the memoir, Experience (2000).

While his father won the Booker prize in 1986 for his novel The Old Devils, Amis was twice listed for the Booker but never won; first for Time’s Arrow in 1991 which also got shortlisted and later in 2003 for Yellow Dog.

Many filmmakers/producers adapted his novels into films. In fact, film based on his novel The Zone of Interest by the same name was screened in Cannes Film Festival in 2023, a day before his death. The Jonathan Glazer film, a Holocaust drama, received a rapturous ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. Other notable films on his works are, The Rachel Papers (1989), Dead Babies (2000), London Fields (2018) and Out of Blue (2018).

While Rachel Papers was about a computer nerd who developed a methodical approach to seduce the girls he is interested in, Out of Blue was murder mystery based on his novel, Night Train.

London Fields, on the other hand, was a neo-noir film starring Billy Bob Thornton as Samson Young, a terminally ill writer who has suffered from writer’s block.