Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 29 April 2010.

A story of a group of people in 1970, holidaying in an Italian castle, at the height of the sexual revolution. Move forward 40 years and Amis fills in the characters stories since then. Another thought provoking and subtly powerful novel.

March 2010 Good Housekeeping selection.

The Good Housekeeping view...

Martin Amis and his much anticipated return to novels with The Pregnant Widow. Seven years in the writing, it portrays a group of bright young things spending the summer of 1970 in an Italian castle, grappling with the impact of the sexual revolution, inspired partly by his late sister, Sally.

Synopsis

It was summer 1970 - a long, hot summer. In a castle in Italy, half a dozen young lives are afloat on the sea of change, trapped inside the history of the sexual revolution. The girls are acting like boys, and the boys are going on acting like boys, and Keith Nearing - twenty years old, a literature student all clogged up with the English novel - is struggling to twist feminism and the rise of women towards his own ends. The sexual revolution may have been a velvet revolution (in at least two senses), but it wasn't bloodless - and now, in the twenty-first century, the year 1970 finally catches up with Keith Nearing. The Pregnant Widow is a comedy of manners and a nightmare, brilliant, haunting and gloriously risque. It is the most eagerly anticipated novel of the year and Martin Amis at his fearless best.

About the Author

Martin Amis is the author of ten novels, two collections of stories and six collections of non-fiction. He lives in London.   More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation