Which Kingsley Amis novel won the 1986 Booker Prize?

Kingsley Amis’s novel The Old Devils won the 1986 Booker Prize.

Set largely among elderly Welsh friends, the novel follows people confronting ageing, memory, marriage, resentment and mortality. Its comic surface is balanced by a serious awareness of physical decline and the losses that accumulate over a lifetime. The group’s drinking, arguments and reunions give the book much of its humour, while the underlying tone is unexpectedly tender.

Amis had already been shortlisted twice before winning, and his victory surprised some observers who believed his best work was behind him. The judges, however, valued the novel’s warmth, wit and unsentimental treatment of old age. His son, novelist Martin Amis, later regarded it as his father’s masterpiece.

Readers sometimes confuse The Old Devils with Amis’s earlier comic novels, especially Lucky Jim, which made his reputation in 1954 but was never a Booker winner. The 1986 shortlist also included Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.