Martin Amis has disclosed that he is writing an autobiographical novel about three other writers: poet Philip Larkin, novelist Saul Bellow and public intellectual Christopher Hitchens. All three, who were friends and inspirations to Amis, died after he had started writing it, and the governing theme of the book will be death, he told the livemint.com website.

Amis, who wrote about all three men in his memoir Experience, did not confirm when the novel would appear appear. He did not reveal its title, but said: “It’s not so much about me, it’s about [the] three other writers … and since I started trying to write it, Larkin died in 1985, Bellow died in 2005, and Hitch died in 2011, and that gives me a theme – death – and a bit more freedom, and fiction is freedom.” He added: “It’s hard going but the one benefit is that I have the freedom to invent things. I don’t have them looking over my shoulder any more.”

Bellow and Hitchens also feature in a book of essays by Amis recently acquired by publisher Jonathan Cape. Titled The Rub of Time, the book will feature essays and reportage by the novelist published between 1986 and 2016. Publication is planned for October 2017.

Dan Franklin, publishing director at Jonathan Cape said: “The Rub of Time contains 20 years’ worth of work and covers such subjects as Nabokov, Bellow and Larkin – and Donald Trump, Princess Diana, tennis, Diego Maradona, Christopher Hitchens and Jeremy Corbyn. It shows, once again, that Martin Amis is without equal as an essayist and an observer of contemporary politics and culture.”

Franklin said he did not know more about the novel-in-progress than the 67-year-old writer had already revealed and said that there is no planned release date yet.

Amis knew all three subjects of his unfinished novel personally. Larkin, a family friend, wrote the poem Born Yesterday for the birth of Amis’s sister Sally (“Tightly folded bud / I have wished you something / None of the others would”). Sally died in 2000 aged 46, and was part of the inspiration for her brother’s 2010 novel The Pregnant Widow, about the fallout from the Sexual Revolution.

Bellow, his “hero and mentor”, whom he knew for 20 years before the Canadian-American writer died, also provided unwitting inspiration for The Pregnant Widow. His deathbed question about whether he would be remembered as a man or “a jerk” provided inspiration for a early scene in the book.

Amis and Hitchens had a long and lively friendship that took in “rough bars” in London where even when they met “five very useful-looking men of no great education, he would never back down”. Amis visited the controversial essayist and intellectual pugilist as he lay dying in hospital. “Sitting in his hellish hospital in Houston, with visitors coming in every 30 minutes, he never lost his grace,” Amis told an audience at the Miami book fair in 2012.

Though Amis has not revealed precise details of the new work, it may feature a significant point of difference between the two friends. “[Hitchens] thought revolutions were good per se,” he told Livemint. “I don’t like revolutions. I’m a gradualist, an incrementalist. Hitch loved the idea of creative destruction, fire and blood, it’s what accelerates and gets you to the next stage, but I hate the violence of revolutions, everything in me recoils from it.”

Despite his revulsion at violence, Amis admitted he was drawn to it in his work. “There’s nothing more nauseating than if, say, a fight breaks out now in this bar. It’s horrible, it’s alien – but we’re fascinated by it.” Violent writing helps contain our fears about violence in real life, he added: “When I create a monster character, the covers of the book are like the bars of a cage. He can’t harm you, but you can look at him. You can look at this monster and admire its severity and horror, but it doesn’t mean you secretly want violence. It’s not a subconscious cry for violence, it’s actually the opposite, it’s how we control it.”

Amis has lived in the US for the last five years and, though he does not miss England, he admitted he is impressed by the multicultural society. Referring to it as “post-racial”, he said: “I’m impressed when I go back because it seems to me more advanced than America. Post-racial. Of course, it isn’t.”

Amis has yet to warm to one aspect of the American character, he said: “If you look at the personal ads in Britain, you know – hopeless, overweight, alcoholic, chain-smoker seeks companion who is pretty tolerant, etc. In America, it’s super-fit, ultra-successful, non-smoker guy wants similar … It’s always selling yourself, which Britain is not.”