Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis (born in Los Angeles in 1964) is an American novelist often regarded as the leading voice of Generation X in fiction. A postmodern writer with a cool, direct style, he has divided critics since his early books, and his name keeps returning to debates about violence and consumerism in contemporary fiction.

He grew up in a middle-class household in Sherman Oaks, in the San Fernando Valley, the son of a property developer and a homemaker. He went on to Bennington College in Vermont, where he moved from studying music toward writing and befriended other writers who would later publish. He wrote his first novel while still a student. Less than Zero appeared in 1985, when he was 21, and brought him fame and money at an early age.

The book followed the children of Hollywood's elite through expensive cars, drugs and excess. Its signature is a spare prose: short sentences, quick dialogue and carefully built descriptions that never pass moral judgement on characters who have little moral compass. In The Rules of Attraction (1987) he told a story through the diaries of several students at an arts college, a rare technique that cemented his place among the writers of his generation.

His best-known work, American Psycho (1991), follows Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street executive who is also a serial killer. Its graphic violence led to petitions for a ban and to the withdrawal of the book by its first publisher, though another house brought out a paperback that same year. Mary Harron's 2000 film, starring Christian Bale, turned it into a cult classic.

Later books include The Informers (1994), Glamorama (1998) and Lunar Park (2005), a blend of autofiction and ghost story. Imperial Bedrooms (2010) returned to his first novel's characters twenty-five years on, and The Shards (2023) fictionalizes his final year of high school in 1981. He has also worked as a screenwriter, journalist and podcast host.

His legacy lies in turning narrative coolness and a critique of money into a method, and in shaping later novelists who write about the emptiness of urban life. He remains a standard reference in discussions of American fiction since the 1980s.