Famous Amis

Over the years, writers have flocked to interview Martin Amis, and each emerged to either humiliate or pay homage to him in print. “It's tempting to slip into these matey diminutives when you're writing about Martin Amis," writes The Independent’s Christina Patterson of her interview with Amis. "Tempting, perhaps, to indicate that you're on his level and can bring him down a peg or two should you feel the need.” His elegant home is dotted with modern art, and Amis relaxes with his wife, Isabel Fonseca, and their 9-year-old daughter. There, the father of that “coruscating, polysyllabic, look-at-me prose,” discusses everything from his new book, The Pregnant Wife (due out in September) to his admiration of Nabokov, to human sexuality: “If a girl says, 'I want to marry daddy,' as they all do at some time, everyone goes 'ah',” Amis explains. “If a little boy says, 'I want to marry mummy,' then he wakes up in hospital."