Books by jonathan coe

Set against the backdrop of the Millenium celebrations and Britain's increasingly compromised role in America's war against terrorism', The Closed Circle lifts the lid on an era in which politics and presentation, ideology and the media have become virtually indistinguishable. Darkly comic, hugely engaging, and compulsively readable, it is the much-anticipated follow-up to Jonathan Coe's bestselli... ...Read More »

At a time when people are looking back on the 1970s with nostalgia, Jonathan What a Carve Up Coe's The Rotters' Club is a timely reminder of quite how ghastly that benighted decade was in Britain. Set in the "industrial" heartland of the West Midlands, it chronicles the growing pains of four Brummie schoolboys--Philip, Sean, Doug and Benjamin--who must not only come to terms with the normal pangs ... ...Read More »

William's life is beset with frustration: his band turns his melodic songs into grotesque parodies of Status Quo, and cool Madelaine dangles out of reach. Things could hardly get worse, it seems - until he becomes the only witness to a bizarre murder. "A very clever, very funny book ...Brilliant" - "Sunday Times". "Like a Hitchcock movie on drugs ...a novel of considerable gusto and panache" - "Ob... ...Read More »

Robin once had promise. Now he has an unfinished thesis in his drawer. Hidden away in his room in Coventry, he writes a sequence of short stories in four notebooks, each an oblique commentary on his circumstances. Then a comical misunderstanding in a public park lands him in serious trouble. ...Read More »

Indifferent by choice, indecisive by nature, Maria ploughs her way through fifteen years of womanhood, unable to see what all the fuss is about. Will she ever be able to direct the course of her own life, or will it end as it began - accidentally Jonathan Coe's first novel, which introduced a wonderful new talent to English fiction. ...Read More »

Set against the backdrop of the Millenium celebrations and Britain's increasingly compromised role in America's war against terrorism', The Closed Circle lifts the lid on an era in which politics and presentation, ideology and the media have become virtually indistinguishable. Darkly comic, hugely engaging, and compulsively readable, it is the much-anticipated follow-up to Jonathan Coe's bestselli... ...Read More »

At a time when people are looking back on the 1970s with nostalgia, Jonathan What a Carve Up Coe's The Rotters' Club is a timely reminder of quite how ghastly that benighted decade was in Britain. Set in the "industrial" heartland of the West Midlands, it chronicles the growing pains of four Brummie schoolboys--Philip, Sean, Doug and Benjamin--who must not only come to terms with the normal pangs ... ...Read More »

'Big, hilarious, intricate, furious, moving' - "Guardian". Telling the stories of the wealthy Winshaw family, "What A Carve Up!" is a riveting social satire on the chattering and all-powerful upper classes. ...Read More »

Sarah is narcoleptic. Her inability to distinguish between dreams and waking reality gives rise to many misunderstandings. For Terry, a disillusioned film critic, sleep is merely a memory. For Dr Dunstan, sleep is nothing less than a global disease. Constructed to reflect the different stages of sleep, "The House of Sleep" is a brilliant and original comedy about the powers we acquire - and those ... ...Read More »

Michael is a lonely writer, obsessed by a film featuring a mad knifeman. When he is commissioned to write the family history of the Winshaws he realizes that the family have cast a blight on his life and he decides to take his revenge by re-enacting his favourite film. ...Read More »