Heavy Water

A masterful short story collection in which Martin Amis wields his sharp wit and dark humor to unravel the complexities of desire, loneliness, and mankind’s place in the universe.

In nine of his finest short stories, Martin Amis probes the absurdities of life on both sides of the Atlantic with his trademark combination of sidesplitting dark comedy and exquisite use of language. The characters in Heavy Water and Other Stories take depressing vacations and strike up dizzying affairs with their own solitude. They lie and commit crimes and prepare for alien invasions; they develop strange hobbies and wrestle desperately with professional, existential, and global crises. Across a variety of landscapes—from England and America to cruise ships and alternate universes—Amis doles out new surprises, inverting social customs and interrogating the value systems we take for granted.

Heavy Water and Other Stories displays the astonishing range of Martin Amis’s powers of invention, penetration, and provocation in the face of our modern world.