WINNER OF THE THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2019**'**The book everyone is talking about' The Times'A comedy for our times' Guardian__________________The country is changing and, up and down the land, cracks are appearing - within families and between generations.In the Midlands Benjamin Trotter is trying to help his aged father navigate a Britain that seems to have forgotten he exists, whils...

**'My comfort read: anything by Jonathan Coe' Bob Mortimer'Coe channels his anger and frustration at the direction his country has taken, as well as his abiding love for it, into prose of enduring beauty' Guardian---**Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly, living with her parents and working a zero-hours contract at Heathrow Airport, while her budding plans of becoming a writer are going nowhere.That is, until family friend Chri...

Birmingham, England, c. 1973: industrial strikes, bad pop music, corrosive class warfare, adolescent angst, IRA bombings. Four friends: a class clown who stoops very low for a laugh; a confused artist enthralled by guitar rock; an earnest radical with socialist leanings; and a quiet dreamer obsessed with poetry, God, and the prettiest girl in school. As the world appears to self-destruct around them, they hold together to navigate the choppy waters of a decidedly ambiguous decade.

'A wickedly funny, clever, but also tender and lyrical novel about Britain and Britishness and what we have become' RACHEL JOYCEIn Bournville, a placid suburb of Birmingham, sits a famous chocolate factory. For eleven-year-old Mary and her family in 1945, it's the centre of the world. The reason their streets smell faintly of chocolate, the place where most of their friends and neighbours have worked for decades. Mary will go on to live through the Coronation and t...

A comedy for our times” (The Guardian), Middle England is a piercing and provocative novel about a country in crisis. From the frenzy of the 2012 Olympics to the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, here Jonathan Coe chronicles the story of modern Britain by way of a cast of characters whose world is being upended.There are newlyweds who disagree about the country’s future and, possibly, their relationship; a political commentator who writes impassioned columns abo...

Beginning in the early years of this century, Number 11 follows two friends, Alison and Rachel, as they come of age. As the narrative progresses from the aftermath of the Iraq War to the present day, its scope broadens to include others who are variously connected to these two girls: Alison’s mother, a has-been singer, competes on a grisly reality TV show; Rachel’s university mentor finally confronts her late husband’s obsessive search for a German film he saw as a child; a young ...

The Dwarves of Death is a hilarious black comedy by Jonathan CoeWilliam has a lot on his mind. Firstly, there's The Alaska Factory, the band he plays in. They're no good, and they make his songs sound about as groovy as an unimpressed record. In fact they're so bad he's seriously thinking of leaving to join a group called The Unfortunates.Secondly, there's Madeline, his high-maintenance girlfriend whose idea of a night of passion is an Andrew Lloyd...

The characters of The Rotters’ Club–Jonathan Coe’s beloved novel of adolescent life in the 1970s–have bartered their innocence for the vengeance of middle age in this incisive portrait of Cool Britannia at the millennium.

A STUNNING, HEARTFELT NEW NOVEL ABOUT A DECADES-LONG FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN TWO COMPOSERS FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE, BOURNVILLE AND MIDDLE ENGLANDThe year is 1907 and Maurice Ravel is one of the most admired young composers in France. In Belle Epoque Paris he cuts a charismatic, dandyish figure, whose technically flawless music hides a deep emotional core, and whose unpredictable talent is as hard to pin down as his my...

A dream of a novel."--Erica Wagner, The Times (London)Following The Winshaw Legacy--Coe's ecstatically reviewed American debut, winner of the John Lewellyn Rhys Prize in England and France's coveted Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger--comes this beguiling, eccentric entertainment.Ashdown--a vast clifftop manor on the English coast--was once a university residence, where a group of students met briefly before going their separate ways. Twelve years later, it has been tran...

A merchant seaman is the sole survivor when his ship is sunk in a battle in the South Pacific. Badly burned, he is stripped of every shred of identity and cast into the sea, naked, faceless, nameless. Rescued and lying in a Pearl Harbor hospital, he is mistakenly identified as the missing Lt. Ben Davenant by Davenant's wife. In the moment, the man decides to go along, to take on Davenant's identity, to return with her to California and take on his life.Mortal Leap may remind some r...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Number 11 by Jonathan Coe, read by Rory Kinnear and Jessica Hynes .This is a novel about the hundreds of tiny connections between the public and private worlds and how they affect us all.It's about the legacy of war and the end of innocence.It's about how comedy and politics are battling it out and comedy might have won.It's about how 140 characters can make fools of us all....