Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: And Other Excursions

Visiting Mrs. Nabokov is a collection of thirty-three of Martin Amis's previously-published essays. The pieces are generally from the 1980s and early 1990s, and cover a wide range of topics — literature (Updike, Rushdie, Larkin, Ballard, etc.), games (chess, soccer, tennis), music (The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Madonna), politics (nuclear weapons, the 1988 Republican primary) and travel (St. Lucia, Cannes, China). The essays are short and informal — often no more than 3-6 pages each — and while they may lack the detailed insights of his longer literary works, Amis brings a witty and ironic eye to modern culture.