Amis started writing the novel after the publication in 2003 of
Yellow Dog to a hostile critical reception and muted commercial success. In a 2006 interview with
The Independent, he revealed that he had abandoned a novella,
The Unknown Known, and instead continued to work on a follow-up full novel that he had started in 2003. He said the new novel was "blindingly autobiographical, but with an Islamic theme". In an interview with Mark Lawson in 2006, Amis said there was some distance from the fictionalised versions of himself, his father,
Kingsley Amis and his novelist mentor,
Saul Bellow, in
The Pregnant Widow, at this point untitled. He said he was "trying to keep up a little bit of indirection" with the autobiographical aspects, saying that his character in the novel was named "Louis" (Amis's middle name), that Kingsley Amis was "The King" and that Saul Bellow was "Chick" (which itself was a reference to the Saul Bellow proxy character in Bellow's final novel
Ravelstein). Further details concerning the struggle to get the novel written emerged on 1 August 2009 during an interview Amis gave the
National Post: "I started a novel [but] then I’m going to write a novella before I get on to it. But I was in big trouble a few years ago, with a huge, dead novel. And it took me a long time, and a lot of grief, to realize—I thought I was clutching at straws—it turned out it was actually two novels, and they couldn't go together. So I wrote
The Pregnant Widow, [that’s] one half of it, and the other half I started, and it will be very autobiographical, the next one."
Sally Amis The character of Violet Nearing, the protagonist's younger sister, is based on Sally Myfanwy Amis (19 January 1954 – 8 November 2000), Martin's younger sister. She had problems all her life with
alcoholism and was described by Amis as one of the sexual revolution's most spectacular victims. At age 24 she gave birth to a daughter, Catherine, who was placed for adoption at three months. Sally suffered a stroke at 40 and died of an infection at age 46. ==Reception==