Jonathan Coe creates vivid characters that whether you love or hate them you want to read more about them. Set in the 1970’s in the time of IRA bombings, strikes and political upheaval it is a fascinating snapshot of history and social comment as well as an immensely enjoyable read. If you haven’t read Coe before then definitely give this a go. Brilliant!
May 2010 Guest Editor John Boyne on Jonathan Coe...
A great novelist. Quirky subject matters, surprising characters, eccentric plots. The kind of writer who can leave the reader laughing out loud, a rare gift. The pair of novels The Rotters’ Club and The Closed Circle are modern masterpieces.
'Sometimes I feel that I am destined always to be offstage whenever the main action occurs. That God has made me the victim of some cosmic practical joke, by assigning me little more than a walk-on part in my own life . . .'
Coming of age in 1970s' Birmingham, teenager Benjamin Trotter is about to discover the agonies and ecstasies of growing up. Whether it is first love or last rites, IRA bombs or industrial strife, prog versus punk rock, expectations of bad poetry or an unexpected life-changing experience involving lost swimming trunks, The Rotters' Club is a heartfelt and hilarious portrait of a particular time and place featuring characters recognisable the world over . . .
'Very funny, a compulsive and gripping read' The Times 'Hugely entertaining' The Observer
'A book to cherish, a book to reread, a book to buy for all your friends' Independent on Sunday
Jonathan Coe's latest novel The Proof of My Innocence is available to pre-order now!
'One of those sweeping, ambitious yet hugely readable, moving, richly comic novels that you find all too rarely in English fiction ... a masterpiece' Daily Telegraph
Author
About Jonathan Coe
Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. Expo 58 is his tenth novel. The previous nine are all available in Penguin: The Accidental Woman, A Touch of Love, The Dwarves of Death, What a Carve Up! (which won the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), The House of Sleep (which won the 1998 Prix Medicis Etranger), The Rotters' Club (winner of the Everyman Wodehouse Prize), The Closed Circle, The Rain Before It Falls and The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim. His biography of the novelist B.S. Johnson, Like a Fiery Elephant, won the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize for best non-fiction book of the year.
