"He was one of the most acclaimed and commented authors in the last 50 years," said the institution of the prestigious British literary prize.

His wife, writer Isabel Fonseca, with whom he had two daughters, told The New York Times and the Guardian that the author of "Money, Money" (1984) and "London Fields" (1989) had died of esophageal cancer.

His death occurred on the day of the presentation in Cannes of a film inspired by his book "The Zone of Interest" (2014), which bears the same name and was directed by Jonathan Glazer.

Set in Auschwitz, the novel tells the story of a Nazi officer who fell in love with the wife of the extermination camp commander.

The "area of interest" was the name used by the Nazis to describe the 40-square-kilometer area surrounding the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Publisher Vintage Books said it was "devastated" by Mr Amis' death. "He leaves an impressive legacy and an indelible mark on the British cultural landscape, and he will be greatly missed," Vintage said on its Twitter account.

Born in 1949 in Wales, Martin Amis redefined British fiction literature in the 1980s and 1990s with novels with a dark and biting style.

After graduating from Oxford University with a degree in English in 1971, he worked as a literary critic before publishing his first novel, "The Rachel Papers", in 1973.

It was with "Money, money", published in 1984 that Martin Amis became known. With a very biting humour, he denounces the lure of profit in Margaret Thatcher's Britain and in the United States under Ronald Reagan.

- 'I'm everywhere in my books' -

The writer quickly surpassed the notoriety of his father, the British novelist Kingsley Amis, with his books that mix humor and melancholy.

He wrote a book on the tragedy of September 11, entitled "The Second Plane", gathering articles, short stories and essays.

The Briton was twice nominated for the Booker Prize in 1991 for "The Arrow of Time" and in 2003 for "Yellow Dog".

The 1990s marked the pinnacle of his literary career, although he was accused of misogyny and, later, Islamophobia – accusations he has always firmly rejected.

In addition to his ten novels, he has published two collections of tales and eight works of non-fiction.

"The novel is an incredibly intimate portrait of a writer," the writer told the BBC in reflecting on his career.

"Although I don't write autobiography, I'm everywhere in my books."

In recent decades, he has become a notorious intellectual, appearing frequently on television, sometimes alongside his longtime friend Christopher Hitchens, a renowned British-American writer who died in 2011.

The Times named him in 2008 as one of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945.

© 2023 AFP