House of Meetings, by Martin Amis, is a 2006 novel about two brothers who share a common love interest while living in a Soviet gulag during the last decade of Stalin's rule. This novel was written by Amis during a two year long self-imposed exile in Uruguay following the release and tepid reception afforded to his 2003 novel Yellow Dog. The writing of House of Meetings "precipitated creative crisis" for Amis, which Amis reflected upon in 2010: “You see those Posy Simmonds cartoons of people by the pool having cocktails and saying into the Dictaphone, ‘On the second day, the last... child died,’” he says. “And I was in Uruguay, with my beautiful wife and beautiful daughters, living a completely stressless life. So I had to do my suffering on the page and, Christ, did I do it. I was very nervous about that book.” The novel centers around the modern-day recollections of the unnamed narrator/protagonist of his time spent in an Arctic gulag and the years that followed. The recollections are presented in the form of a memoir sent to the narrator's American stepdaughter, Venus.
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| Author: | Martin Amis |
| Genre: | Novel, Fiction |
| Year published: | 2006 |
| Number of editions: | 4 |