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...

The year is 1907 and Maurice Ravel is one of the most admired but also most controversial composers in France. An aloof, dandyish figure, he is at the centre of a group of rebellious artists who call themselves the Apaches. It is considered a scandal that he has never won the Prix de Rome, despite entering compositions for it several times. As for his personal life, he has no known attachments, and no one seems to know whether his romantic leanings incline him towards men, or women, or nei...

A wickedly funny take on life under the Thatcher government by the prize-winning author of Bournvlile.It is the 1980s and the Winshaw family are getting richer and crueller by the year:Newspaper-columnist Hilary gets thousands for telling it like it isn't. Henry's turning hospitals into car parks. Roddy's selling art in return for sex. Down on the farm Dorothy's squeezing every last pound from her livestock. Thomas is making a killing on the stock ...

Brought to you by Penguin.From the bestselling, award-winning author of Middle England comes a profoundly moving, brutally funny and brilliantly true portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family'A wickedly funny, clever, but also tender and lyrical novel about Britain and Britishness and what we have become' Rachel Joyce__________________In Bournville, a placid sub...

Expo 58 - Good-looking girls and sinister spies: a naive Englishman at loose in Europe in Jonathan Coe's brilliant comic novelLondon, 1958: unassuming civil servant Thomas Foley is plucked from his desk at the Central Office of Information and sent on a six-month trip to Brussels. His task: to keep an eye on The Brittania, a brand new pub which will form the heart of the British presence at Expo 58 - the biggest World's Fair of the century, and the first t...

The prize-winning, bestselling author of Middle England turns his gaze to one of cinema's most intriguing figures - famed director of Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder.***SOON TO BE A MAJOR FILM***In the summer of 1977, naïve Calista Frangopoulou sets out to venture into the world. On a Greek island that has been turned into a film set, she finds herself working for Billy Wilder, about whom she knows almost n...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Rain Before it Falls written by Jonathan Coe, read by Jenny Agutter.'What I want you to have, Imogen, above all, is a sense of your own history; a sense of where you come from, and of the forces that made you.'Rosamund lies dying in her remote Shropshire home. But before she does so, she has one last task: to put on tape not just her own story but the story of the young blind girl, her cousin's granddau...

Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements by Jonathan Coe - an extraordinary non-fiction collection from the author of EXPO 58From celebrating the greatness of Gulliver's Travels to tracing the impact of Margaret Thatcher's death, from interviewing Brian Eno to finding Hitchcockian elements in a Disney film*,* Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements is a hugely funny, moving and fascinating 20-year journey through the world of books, music, film, politics and memor...

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...

'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...

WINNER OF THE EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE__________Birmingham, England, c. 1973: industrial strikes, bad pop music, first love, corrosive class warfare, detention, IRA bombings.Four friends: a class clown who stoops very low for a laugh; a confused artist enthralled by rock; an earnest radical with socialist leanings; and a quiet dreamer obsessed with poetry, God, and the prettiest girl in school.Unforgettably funny and painfully honest,...