Success, the novel that launched Martin Amis's fame, is a kind of Nabokov's Despair, transported from pre-war Germany to modern London, dismantled into bricks and put back together. Once upon a time there were two half-brothers. The rich man and the poor man, the aristocrat and the plebeian, the playboy and the impotent, the handsome man and the fearful man. Harlequin and Pierrot. Prince and the Pauper. Fashionable gallery owner and office plankton. One selflessly copies Oscar Wilde, and Welbeck will take the example of the other in the future. For twelve months—from the chapter “Amber” to the chapter “December”—the brothers take turns taking the floor, one monologue per month. They share an apartment, the interpretations of the same events are different.