The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage, 1994-2017

An expansive and incisive collection of essays and reportage from one of England’s celebrated writers.

Martin Amis spent decades turning his forensic intellect toward the absurdities, vanities, and occasional triumphs of modern life, and capturing it in inimitable prose. In The Rub of Time, a collection of his sharpest nonfiction from over twenty years, he trains his gaze on politics, literature, sports, and the spectacle of celebrity with a wit as lethal as it is precise.

Here, Amis dissects the rise of Donald Trump with mordant amusement, penetrating the theatrical bluster and ominous undertones of American politics. He revisits literary titans Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov, parsing their genius with the awe of a disciple and the rigor of a peer. From the war on terror to Brexit, from the British Royal Family to the modern American West, Amis blends personal reflection with razor-sharp cultural critique, always with his signature mix of erudition and dark comedy. The Rub of Time is Amis at his most incisive, irreverent, and unmissable.

Martin Amis (1949-2023) was a British novelist and critic. His work includes fifteen novels, among them Money, London Fields, and The Information; two collections of short stories; five books of essays; and the acclaimed memoir Experience.