"Are there any ugly women that Amis affords full humanity? I'm not convinced." Leon Craig
My Martin AmisShow Notes
Leon Craig's debut novel The Decadence was published in September of 2025, with the paperback due to be published in August 2026.
She speaks to Jack Aldane about Amis's 2010 novel The Pregnant Widow, a complex synthesis of comedy of manners, roman à clef, and historical revision that examines the language and practices of the sexual revolution through a set of characters ostensibly holidaying for a summer in Campania in Italy circa 1970.
Together, they discuss the characters' parts in advancing the discourse Amis wants us to entertain about what the sexual revolution stood for, as well as those it served, those it cheated, and what we still find decades later in its aftermath. Also featured in this episodes are nods to Experience and Dead Babies, the latter a particular influence on The Decadence.
Leon also describes what it feels like to be a hereditary novelist in 2026, and what writers like herself owe Amis for having pressed on with his career despite living in Kingsley's shadow, and why no writer, however well-connected, gets to avoid the unglamourous side of the job.
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