Lionel Asbo
  • Published: 3 June 2013
  • ISBN: 9780099565680
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $24.99

Lionel Asbo

State of England

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Jul 2012
Paperback
3 Jun 2013
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A new reissue series of Martin Amis's novels to mark his 70th birthday

Lionel Asbo has just won £139,999,999.50 on the Lottery.

A horribly violent, but horribly unsuccessful criminal, Lionel’s attentions up to now have all been on his nephew, Desmond Pepperdine. He showers him with fatherly advice (‘carry a knife’) and introduces Des to the joys of internet porn. Meanwhile, Des desires nothing more than books, a girl to love and to steer clear Uncle Li’s psychotic pitbulls, Joe and Jeff.

But Lionel’s winnings are not necessarily all good news. For Des has a secret, and its discovery could unleash his uncle’s implacable vengeance.

‘One of Amis's funniest novels’ New Yorker
‘A book that looks at us, laughs at us, looks at us harder, closer, and laughs at us harder and still more savagely’ Observer
  • Published: 3 June 2013
  • ISBN: 9780099565680
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $24.99
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About the author

Martin Amis

Martin Amis was the author of fourteen novels, two collections of stories and eight works of non-fiction. His novel Time’s Arrow was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for which his subsequent novel Yellow Dog was also longlisted, and his memoir Experience won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest writers since 1945. Amis died in May 2023.

portrait photo of Martin Amis

Also by Martin Amis

Inside Story
Invasion of the Space Invaders
The Rub of Time
The Zone of Interest
The Pregnant Widow
The Second Plane
The Information
See all

Praise for Lionel Asbo

Terrific... Both funny and serious, and (as always wth Amis) very very on-the-money'

Richard Ford

Full of hilarious set-pieces, wisecracks and wordplay.

Daily Express

The broadest comedy he has ever published… Lionel is a fantastic brute… I laughed a lot. Amis’s delight in the incorrigible is genuinely Dickensian… This is a verbally inventive comedy…to be enjoyed in the same spirit as Little Britain… It’s a hoot

Evening Standard

The novel is something of a joy...he makes the dreadful funny, the grotesque poetic

The Times

He remains one of the most interesting authors we have, not least for continually engaging with those areas in the life of a nation which journalists and politicians tip-toe around

Independent on Sunday

Being an Amis novel it’s not without the odd good joke, and he is, of course, incapable of writing and inelegant line. It’s almost as if he alone can sense both the golden ratio of a sentence, and its perfect rhythm: it’s like he’s Michelangelo and Keith Moon

Sunday Telegraph

I read the book in a sitting, chortling throughout…with its swaggering prose and undertow of quiet pathos, this book marks a return to something not far short of Amis’s best

Mail on Sunday

It had me roaring with laughter

Independent

This is classic Amis

Sunday Herald

It's a Big Mac made from filet mignon… It is a book of lovehate. It is a powershake... A book that looks at us, laughs at us, looks at us harder, closer, and laughs at us harder and still more savagely. It is every inch the novel that we all deserve.

Observer