Martin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century – in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience – he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023. Rachel Cusk was born in Canada in 1967 and moved to the United Kingdom in 1974. She is the author of nine novels and three works of non-fiction. She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: Outline (2014) was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Baileys Prize, the Giller Prize and the Canadian Governor General's Award. It was also picked by the New York Times as one of the top ten books of the year. Its follow-up, Transit (2016), was chosen as a book of the year by the Observer, New Statesman, Guardian and Spectator. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'. In 2015 her version of Euripides’ Medea was put on at the Almeida Theatre with Rupert Goold directing and was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

I love reading novels about the city but this is my favourite. It manages to incorporate the seedy and the middle class Notting Hill side of the capital, all in one glorious unputdownable novel