House of Meetings

Description

A new reissue series of Martin Amis's novels to mark his 70th birthday 'The best thing Martin Amis has done in fiction for years' Literary Review There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would travel continental distances, over weeks and months, in the hope of spending a night, with their particular enemy of the people, in the House of Meetings. The consequences of these liaisons were almost invariably tragic. House of Meetings is about one such liaison. It is a triangular romance- two brothers fall in love with the same girl, a nineteen-year-old Jewess, in Moscow, which is poised for pogrom in the gap between the war and the death of Stalin. Both brothers are arrested, and their rivalry slowly complicates itself over a decade in the slave camp above the Arctic Circle. 'It is difficult not to be impressed by this compact tour de force' Observer

Martin Amis is the author of fourteen novels, two collections of stories and eight works of non-fiction. His novel Time's Arrow was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for which his subsequent novel Yellow Dog was also longlisted, and his memoir Experience won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest writers since 1945. He lives in New York.

This novella is the best thing Martin Amis has done in fiction for years: very complex, very forceful, startling in the amount of ground it covers, and densely and intelligently put together * Literary Review * An ambitious feat...the result is brilliant * Independent * It is difficult not to be impressed by this compact tour de force... Amis has produced a memorable novel and a memorable protagonist * Observer * A singular, unimpeachable triumph * The Economist * Unmistakably Amis's best novel since London Fields...a slender, moving novel, streaked with dark comedy * Sunday Times *