British novelist Martin Amis has died at 73

British novelist Martin Amis died Friday at his Florida home at age 73, according to the Booker Prize and several media outlets on Saturday.

"He was one of the most acclaimed and commented authors of the last fifty years," said the institution of the prestigious British literary prize. His wife, writer Isabel Fonseca, told The New York Times and the Guardian that the author of Money, Money (1984) and London Fields (1989) had died of esophageal cancer.

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.

One of the fifty greatest British writers

Born in 1949 in Wales, Martin Amis redefined British fiction literature in the 1980s and 1990s with novels with a dark and biting style. He wrote a book on the tragedy of September 11, entitled The Second Plane, gathering articles, short stories and essays.

The Briton, who has written a dozen novels, was twice nominated for the Booker Prize in 1991 for The Arrow of Time and in 2003 for Yellow Dog. The Times named him in 2008 as one of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945.

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