Download or read book What a Carve Up written by Jonathan Coe and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2008-05-19 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wickedly funny take on life under the Thatcher government by the prize-winning author of Middle England. 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 exchange; and Mark is selling arms to dictators. But once their hapless biographer Michael Owen starts investigating the family's trail of greed, corruption and immoral doings, the time growing ripe for the Winshaws to receive their comeuppance . . . __________ 'A sustained feat of humour, suspense and polemic, full of twists and ironies' Hilary Mantel, Sunday Times 'A riveting social satire on the chattering and all-powerful upper classes' Time Out 'Big, hilarious, intricate, furious, moving' Guardian Written with his signature wit, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, The Proof of My Innocence is available to pre-order now!

Download or read book Mr Wilder and Me written by Jonathan Coe and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE ROTTERS’ CLUB AND MIDDLE ENGLAND In the heady summer of 1977, a naïve young woman called Calista sets out from Athens to venture into the wider world. On a Greek island that has been turned into a film set, she finds herself working for the famed Hollywood director Billy Wilder, about whom she knows almost nothing. But the time she spends in this glamorous, unfamiliar new life will change her for good. While Calista is thrilled with her new adventure, Wilder himself is living with the realization that his star may be on the wane. Rebuffed by Hollywood, he has financed his new film with German money, and when Calista follows him to Munich for the shooting of further scenes, she finds herself joining him on a journey of memory into the dark heart of his family history. In a novel that is at once a tender coming-of-age story and an intimate portrait of one of cinema’s most intriguing figures, Jonathan Coe turns his gaze on the nature of time and fame, of family and the treacherous lure of nostalgia. When the world is catapulting towards change, do you hold on for dear life or decide it's time to let go? “Outstanding... In a sense, the novel toward which Coe’s fiction has always been heading.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

Download or read book The Closed Circle written by Jonathan Coe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Number 11 written by Jonathan Coe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 police constable investigates the seemingly unrelated deaths of two stand-up comedians; and a giant spider lurks in the darkness beneath one of London’s most staggeringly expensive neighborhoods. Combining his signature humor, psychological insight and social commentary, Jonathan Coe holds up a disquieting, unforgiving mirror in which to reflect a world where the systems are broken and everyone can—and perhaps must—name his or her own price.

Download or read book Understanding Jonathan Coe written by Merritt Moseley and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2016-07-30 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the life, career, and oeuvre of the British novelist and biographer In Understanding Jonathan Coe, the first full-length study of the British novelist, Merritt Moseley surveys a writer whose experimental technique has become increasingly well received and critically admired. Coe is the recipient of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Prix Medicis, the Priz du Meilleur Livre Entranger, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prizes for Fiction, and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction. His oeuvre includes eleven novels and three biographies—two of famous Hollywood actors Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Stewart and one of English modernist novelist B. S. Johnson. Following an introductory overview of Coe's life and career, Moseley examines Coe's complex engagement with popular culture, his experimental technique, his political satire, and his broad-canvased depictions of British society. Though his first three books, An Accidental Woman, A Touch of Love, and The Dwarves of Death, received little notice upon publication, Moseley shows their strengths as literary works and as precursors. In 1994 Coe gained visibility with What a Carve Up!, which has remained his most admired and discussed novel. He has since published a postmodern take on sleep disorders and university students, The House of Sleep; a two-volume roman-fleuve consisting of The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle; a touching account of a lonely woman's life, The Rain before It Falls; a satiric vision of a misguided life, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim; and a domestic comedy thriller set at the 1958 world's fair in Brussels, Expo '58. Moseley explicates these works and discusses the recurring features of Coe's fiction: political consciousness, a deep artistic concern with the form of fiction, and comedy.

Download or read book The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim written by Jonathan Coe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maxwell Sim can’t seem to make a single meaningful connection. His absent father was always more interested in poetry; he maintains an e-mail correspondence with his estranged wife, though under a false identity; his incomprehensible teenage daughter prefers her BlackBerry to his conversation; and his best friend since childhood is refusing to return his calls. He has seventy-four friends on Facebook, but nobody to talk to. In an attempt to stir himself out of this horrible rut, Max quits his job as a customer liaison at the local department store and accepts a strange business proposition that falls in his lap by chance: he’s hired to drive a Prius full of toothbrushes to the remote Shetland Islands, part of a misguided promotional campaign for a dental-hygiene company intent on illustrating the slogan “We Reach Furthest.” But Max’s trip doesn’t go as planned, as he’s unable to resist making a series of impromptu visits to important figures from his past who live en route. After a string of cruelly enlightening and intensely awkward misadventures, he finds himself falling in love with the soothing voice of his GPS system (“Emma”) and obsessively identifying with a sailor who perpetrated a notorious hoax and subsequently lost his mind. Eventually Max begins to wonder if perhaps it’s a severe lack of self-knowledge that’s hampering his ability to form actual relationships. A humane satire and modern-day picaresque, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim is a gently comic and rollickingly entertaining novel about the paradoxical difficulties of making genuine attachments in a world of advanced communications technology and rampant social networking.

Download or read book The Rotters Club written by Jonathan Coe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Broken Mirror written by Jonathan Coe and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-02 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can desire really transform reality? From award-winning novelist Jonathan Coe and distinguished Italian artist Chiara Coccorese comes The Broken Mirror, a political parable for children, a contemporary fairy tale for adults, and a fable for all ages. One day Claire, to escape her quarrelsome parents, takes refuge in the dump behind her house. There she finds a broken mirror, a nasty piece of sharp glass... yet she is strangely drawn to it. She soon discovers it has the power to transform even the most drab reality into a fairy-tale world: the grey sky is reflected blue, and Claire’s modest, suburban house is transformed into the most beautiful castle. As Claire grows older, always accompanied by her magic mirror, she can see her face without her teenage acne, and her town before it fell victim to thieving property developers. But, in reality, libraries are being turned into luxury flats wherever she looks, and the boy Claire loves is instead her worst enemy. Frustrated and angry with the mirror’s illusions, Claire is about to destroy it when the mysterious Peter steps in: he has also found a shard of broken mirror, and so begins their journey to piece together the larger puzzle... Previously published in Italian, French, Greek and Dutch, The Broken Mirror comes to life in English for the first time, to be read with equal pleasure by children and adults.

Download or read book The Story of Gulliver written by Jonathan Coe and published by Pushkin Children's Books. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For the first time in his life, Gulliver felt ashamed of himself and his fellow-humans." Gulliver is a travel-hungry and adventurous ship's doctor, who has the odd misfortune of being ship-wrecked four times in as many voyages. Through Jonathan Coe's expert retelling of Swift's famous satire about our human hubris and desires, today's young readers are swept along as Gulliver finds himself a giant among tiny humans in Lilliput; a tiny human among giants in Brobdignag; on the flying island of Laputa, with its most impractical intellectuals; and finally in the land of the Houyhnhnms, talking horses who think precious little of human "Yahoos". Dave Eggers says, of the series: "I couldn't be prouder to be a part of it. Ever since Alessandro conceived this idea I thought it was brilliant. The editions that they've complied have been lushly illustrated and elegantly designed."

Download or read book Like a Fiery Elephant written by Jonathan Coe and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 life at the age of forty. Jonathan Coe's biography is based upon unique access to the vast collection of papers Johnson left behind after his death, and upon dozens of interviews with those who knew him best. As unconventional in form as one of its subject's own novels, it paints a remarkable picture -- sometimes hilarious, often overwhelmingly sad -- of a tortured personality; a man whose writing tragically failed to keep at bay the demons that pursued him.

Download or read book Expo 58 written by Jonathan Coe and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An English public employee becomes embroiled in a Soviet plot while he oversees the construction of an authentic British pub being showcased at the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels.

Download or read book 9th 13th written by Jonathan Coe and published by Penguin Hardcover. This book was released on 2005 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 2005 Penguin will publish 70 unique titles to celebrate the company's 70th birthday. The titles in the Pocket Penguins series are emblematic of the renowned breadth of quality of the Penguin list and will hark back to Penguin founder Allen Lane's vision of good books for all'. was assured. There followed a string of widely acclaimed novels that together chart the changing social fabric of Britain over the last thirty years. 9th and 13th brings together several uncollected pieces of fiction and non-fiction, some of which never before published in the UK, from the master of comedy and pathos.

Download or read book The Accidental Woman written by Jonathan Coe and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2008-05-19 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Accidental Woman is a wickedly funny novel from bestseller Jonathan Coe For Maria, nothing is certain. Her life is a chain of accidents. Untouched by friendship, unimpressed by devoted Ronny and his endless marriage proposals, she lives in a world of her own, but not of her own making. Even as she stumbled on through university, work, marriage and motherhood, Maria finds it hard to see what all the fuss is about. Will our heroine ever be able to control the direction of her life, or will it end, as it began, by accident? What does chance next have in store for her? From the author of the award-winning The Rotters' Club and What a Carve Up!, The Accidental Woman will be enjoyed by readers of Nick Hornby and William Boyd and centres on a quirky and highly individual woman who is still struggling to find her place in life. 'The Accidental Woman has a cocky individual voice of its own. . . here's precocious, rebellious talent' Mail on Sunday 'Slyly parodies the clichés of most first novels' Guardian 'A convincing stuffy of the random impetuses by which human lives tend to be governed. It is also very funny' Spectator Jonathan Coe's novels are filled with moving, astute observations of life and love, and are written with a revealing honesty that has captivated a generation of readers. His other titles, The Accidental Woman, The Rotters' Club (winner of the Everyman Wodehouse prize), The Closed Circle, The Dwarves of Death, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, The House of Sleep (winner of the 1998 Prix Médicis Étranger), A Touch of Love, What a Carve Up! (winner of the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Middle England (Costa Novel Award), Mr Wilder and Me and Bournville are all available in Penguin paperback. Written with his signature wit, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, The Proof of My Innocence, is available to order now!

Download or read book The House of Sleep written by Jonathan Coe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-11-23 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 transformed into a clinic for sleep disorders, and a series of strange coincidences and ostensible synchronicities draws the same group of people together once again, each of them in different ways plagued by sleep. Sarah is narcoleptic, and her inability to distinguish between dreams and waking reality gives rise to a great many misunderstandings--one of which is to change Robert's life forever, as he persists for years (and then some) in his attempt to win her love. For Terry, a disillusioned film critic whose career has been derailed by Sarah's affliction, sleep is merely a memory, for his insomnia is complete and he can only yearn for the tantalizing dreams he enjoyed in youth. And for the increasingly deranged Dr. Dudden, who has made the subject the focus of his medical practice, sleep is nothing less than a global disease. With panache worthy of Nabokov, and with the heart to match his sophistication, Jonathan Coe has written a breathtakingly original comedy about the powers we acquire--and those we relinquish--when we fall asleep, or fall in love. "This is a remarkable book, most impressive for its subtle narrative patterning, like a dapple of light and shade, allowing us to indulge the illusion of understanding its characters, until, all at once, the darkness, the isolation and the mystery return. Perhaps most strange of all, for a novel about insomniacs, The House of Sleep is a wonderful bedtime read." --David Nokes, Sunday Times

Download or read book Tales from the Radiation Age written by Jason Sheehan and published by 47north. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a post-apocalyptic America that has shattered into a hundred perpetually warring fiefdoms, anyone with a loud voice and a doomsday weapon can be king (and probably has been). Duncan Archer--con man, carpetbagger, survivor--has found a way to somehow successfully navigate the end of the world, with its giant killer robots, radioactive mutants, mad scientists, rampant nanotechnology, armed gangs, sea monsters, and 101 unpleasant ways to die. But when he meets Captain James Barrow, a former OSS agent and the most wanted man in the world, Duncan finds himself a reluctant hero caught up in a whole new level of weird, rollicking adventure... And the second most wanted man in the world. Tales from the Radiation Age is a throwback to the pulp-origins of science fiction, painting a vision of the future that's richly detailed, wildly imaginative--and altogether too easy to imagine.

Download or read book Power in Politics and Academia in Jonathan Coe s Novels written by Denisa Dumitrascu and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-18 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the intricate manifestations of contemporary power, its related ideology, and the “resistance” and reaction to the dominant discourse in Jonathan Coe’s political fiction, covering the dismantling of the British social-democratic consensus, Thatcherism and Blairism, up to the new ideology of “Globalism.” Beyond the predictable dichotomy of support-opposition to power, the book argues the modern individual seems to have found another ontological approach, for which it coins the concept of “intentional unpower”. Furthermore, it demonstrates that there are three possibilities regarding the evolution of this type of social response, and invites the readers to discover them, while enjoying Coe’s subtlety and humour. Given its broad approach, the book will appeal to researchers in a wide range of domains, including literary and cultural studies, political theory, and sociology, as well as any reader fascinated with the essence of power, intellectual response, and discourses containing their own elements of subversion.

Download or read book The Dwarves of Death written by Jonathan Coe and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2008-05-19 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dwarves of Death is a hilarious black comedy by Jonathan Coe William 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 Webber musical followed by a doorstep peck on the cheek. Maybe they're not soulmates after all? Lastly, there's the bizarre murder he's just witnessed. The guiding force behind The Unfortunates lies bludgeoned to death at his feet and, unfortunately for William, there aren't too many other suspects standing nearby. . . 'It's about being young, poor, confused and in love. It's also very funny. . . sharp, lucid and witty' Guardian 'Notable for its fresh, contemporary flavour and its bristling intellectual energy. Coe has huge powers of observation and enormous literary panache' Sunday Times Jonathan Coe's novels are filled with biting social commentary, moving and astute observations of life and hilarious set pieces that have made him one of the most popular writers of his generation. His other titles, Bournville, Middle England (Winner of the Costa Novel Award) What a Carve Up! (winner of the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), A Touch of Love, The Rotters' Club (winner of the Everyman Wodehouse prize), The Closed Circle, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, The House of Sleep (winner of the1998 Prix Médicis Étranger), and The Rain Before it Falls, are all available in Penguin paperback. Jonathan Coe's latest novel THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE is available to pre-order now!