In his heyday, during the 1960s and early 1970s, B. S. Johnson was one of the best-known young novelists in Britain. A passionate advocate for the avant-garde in both literature and film, he became famous -- not to say notorious -- both for his forthright views on the future of the novel and for his idiosyncratic ways of putting them into practice. But in November 1973 Johnson's lifelong depression got the better of him, and he was found dead at his north London home. He had taken his own ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

Brought to you by Penguin.Costa Best Novel Award 2019 Winner.It was tempting to think, at times like this, that some bizarre hysteria had gripped the British people.Beginning eight years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by Poundland, and London, where frenzied riots give way to Olympic fever, Middle England follows a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through a time of immense change....

Brought to you by Penguin.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 Chris comes to stay. He’s been investigating a radical think tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that’s been scheming to push the British government in an ever more extreme direction. When...

'Witty, unexpected and curiously unsettling. Coe carries it off with empathy, comedy and a ventriloquist's ear for idiom' LITERARY REVIEW'Clever, engaging, spring-loaded with mysteries and surprises' TIME OUT'Masterly, highly engaging. Coe's eye for the details of contemporary life remains as sharp as ever' DAILY MAILMaxwell Sim could be any of us. He could be you.He's about to hav...

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...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Dwarves of Death by Jonathan Coe, read by Daniel Weyman.Music, murder ... and MadeleineWilliam 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 unpressed record. In fact they're so bad he's seriously thinking of leaving to join a group called The Unfortunates.Secondly, there's Madeleine, his high-...

Pentatonic, written and read by Jonathan Coe, is a daring and original story about family and memory, originally inspired by the accompanying music from Danny Manners.When a family celebrates the prize-giving day at their daughter's secondary school, thoughts turn to their own childhoods. The father remembers his living room piano recital, recorded on a well-worn cassette tape. The mother remembers her own father's war tragedy. As the father searches for t...