The Pregnant Widow [Hardcover]

'There is a sort of reverse bathos operating in Amis...no one better understands the cosmic joke that is humanity.'
--Observer

`Stand back and prepare for the fireworks'
--Sunday Times

`Is this the return to the form we have all been waiting for? In short - yes, it is'.
--Prospect

"Amis employs his trademark derisive wit" --Marie Claire

"The Pregnant Widow is beautifully achieved, cunningly relaxed, and reveals considerable emotional depth... The Man Booker Prize would be no more than its due" --Daily Telegraph

"Mr Amis has always been a stimulating writer...the Pregnant Widow" is Amis at his absolute and unique best" --The Economist

"Amis writes thrillingly well... [The Pregnant Widow] delivers fantastic enjoyment... It is funny, clever and knowing" --The Daily Mail

"This is Amis' finest novel for a long time. It is close to a masterpiece... read it: it is hilarious."
--FT

'delight us Amis does, and as few can' -- The Independent --The Independent, February 2010

'The Pregnant Widow, for all its faults, remains a marvel of unsparing satire of wasted lives, wasted opportunity.' -- The Tablet

"wordy, but you're carried along in a slightly titillating way" --The Observer

`He's a forceful comic stylist'
--London Review of Books

"He provokes and is cruel but he does it in such a brilliant, hilarious way." --The Times

The Pregnant Widow is replete with ambitious aphorisms, drunkenly swaying between brilliance and extraordinary silliness. -- Third Way, Reviews, Andrew Tate

`his ability to draw you into his writing is second to none' --Guardian

`I don't think you can ever be disappointed with an Amis novel'
--Daily Telegraph

the best English novel of the year... warm, rueful, resonant --The Observer

The best English novel of the year was Martin Amis's warm, rueful, resonant The Pregnant Widow --The New Review

One of Britain's finest writers returns with an extraordinary new novel

Summer 1970 - a long, hot summer. In a castle in Italy, half a dozen young lives are afloat on the sea of change, trapped inside the history of the sexual revolution. The girls are acting like boys, and the boys are going on acting like boys, and Keith Nearing - twenty years old, a literature student all clogged up with the English novel - is struggling to twist feminism and the rise of women towards his own ends.

The sexual revolution may have been a velvet revolution (in at least two senses), but it wasn't bloodless - and now, in the twenty-first century, the year 1970 finally catches up with Keith Nearing.

The Pregnant Widow is a comedy of manners and a nightmare, brilliant, haunting and gloriously risqué. It is the most eagerly anticipated novel of the year and Martin Amis at his fearless best.

'Read it: it is hilarious, wonderfully perceptive, uncompromisingly ambitious and written by a great master of the English language'

Justin Cartwright, FINANCIAL TIMES

'Moving and humane, The Pregnant Widow also captivates by the accustomed wit and elegance of its style. It is beautifully achieved, cunningly relaxed, and reveals considerable emotional depth'

Philip Hensher, DAILY TELEGRAPH

An Italian castle, Summer, 1970. Sex is very much on everyone's mind. The girls are acting like boys and the boys are going on acting like boys. Keith Nearing - a bookish twenty year old, in that much disputed territory between five foot six and five foot seven - is struggling to twist feminism towards his own ends. Torn between three women, his scheming doesn't come off quite as he expects.

And now in the twenty first century, as he reflects on that summer holiday, the aftershocks of the sexual revolution finally catch up with Keith Nearing.

The Pregnant Widow is gloriously risqué and ferociously funny. It is Martin Amis at his fearless best.

'No one better understands the cosmic joke that is humanity. Nor is anyone as funny telling it' OBSERVER

'Amis writes thrillingly well... It is funny, clever and knowing'

DAILY MAIL

'Delight us Amis does, and as few can'

INDEPENDENT

'What a voice! There's a full-throated energy to this book that makes more respectable contemporary novels look like turgid waffle'

GUARDIAN

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Martin Amis is the author of eleven previous novels, the memoir Experience, two collections of stories and six collections of non-fiction, most recently The Second Plane. He lives in London.