Richard Brooks, Arts Editor
 
 
 

MARTIN AMIS, among the most controversial British novelists of his generation, is set to cause shock waves with his next work which features an explosive mix of royalty, pornography and paedophilia.

In the name of research, Amis, who has just published his memoir Experience, has been investigating the porn emporiums of Los Angeles. This included spending half a day on a film set where actors "clearly were doing it for real. It was weird and not a turn-on", Amis told The Sunday Times. "It was disturbing."

Amis, who will be speaking today at the Hay-on-Wye book festival, was alarmed at the concentration on violence that he encountered in the sex films: "It makes British porn seem like a blushing wallflower."

In his new novel, to be delivered to his publisher Jonathan Cape next year, the main character, Xan Meo, suffers a head injury which so alters his personality that he becomes sex-
obsessed. "It's mainly a novel about a clash of cultures - a disreputable cast from the underworld on the one hand and from royalty on the other," said the author.

The plot draws Meo, who becomes a porn merchant, into a scandal with a 14-year-old princess, who is the daughter of the king of England, Henry IX. She is set up in a paedophile scam, which has a huge impact on the credibility of the monarchy.

While the book is, of course, fiction there are obvious parallels with the real British royal family. The queen in Amis's novel is involved in a serious car crash. Whereas Diana, Princess of Wales died, the fictional queen goes into a deep coma. Amis is intrigued by the Windsor clan, which has suffered not just from marriage problems but also from recent allegations about Prince William mixing with friends who take drugs.

Royalty may be a new subject for him, but Amis has explored low life in his novels before. In Money, his character John Self is a porn freak involved in corruption in New York. In London Fields, Keith Talent is a disreputable character with a stable of mistresses.

In Experience, Amis devotes a section to his cousin, Lucy Partington, who disappeared in 1973. Twenty-one years later it was revealed that she had been sexually tortured and murdered by Fred West, the serial killer.

While Amis admits that he never knew Lucy well, he calls her "a very remarkable person". He keeps a photograph of her by his desk. Next to it is a photograph of his daughter Delilah, who was born from an affair he had in 1975. He did not meet her, however, until 1995.

Writing Experience was "extremely cathartic" for Amis: "I've never been to a psychiatrist. The book was a crash course in self-examination." While a memoir of his life from childhood until 1999, when he turned 50, it focuses on the mid-1990s when Amis lost his father Kingsley, found out about Lucy and Delilah, and went through a divorce.

"While writing it I went through this complete change in my sleeping pattern," said Amis. "It was not an excuse not to write, as I was enjoying the writing. I was just emotionally exhausted. Yet as soon as the book was finished I returned to my usual pattern."

Amis also used Experience to lay some ghosts to rest, particularly about his relationship with his father. It has often been said that Amis was angry that his father cared little for his son or his work. "I was pissed off the once, when he just read one chapter of one of my early novels. But that's it. It really was an extremely close relationship."

Like his friend Salman Rushdie, Amis has suffered from a bad press. It was not helped when he fell out with one of his best friends, fellow writer Julian Barnes. This occurred after Amis left his agent Pat Kavanagh, Barnes's wife, for the American agent Andrew Wylie and a large advance for Information, his last big novel. It did not get good reviews.

"I didn't write Experience to settle scores," said Amis, "even though much of what's written about me has been distorted."

Amis has recently hinted that, like Rushdie, he might live in America. Rushdie lives in New York with his 29-year-old model girlfriend, Padma Lakshmi. Amis's wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca, whom he married in 1997, is American.

"I don't feel fed up with London," said Amis. It's just that I think I might live in America in a few years' time. With me, it's pull and not push."

Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd.