The Proof of My Innocence

THE NEW STATE OF THE NATION MYSTERY FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR, AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW 
 
 When Phyl, a young literature graduate, moves back home with her parents, she soon finds herself frustrated by the narrow horizons of English country life. As for her plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere. But the chance discovery of a forgotten novelist from the 1980s stirs her into action, as does a visit from her uncle Richard - especially when he tells her that he’s working on a political story that might put his life in danger. 
 
Richard has been following the careers of a group of students, all present at Cambridge University in the 1980s, now members of a think-tank which has been quietly pushing the British government towards extremism. And now, after years in the political wilderness, they might be in a position to put their ideas into action. 
 
As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new Prime Minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Richard pursues his story to a mysterious conference taking place deep in the Cotswolds. When Phyl hears that one of the delegates has been murdered, she begins to wonder if real life is starting to merge with the novel she’s been trying to write. But does the explanation really lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old? 
 
Darting between decades and genres, THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE reimagines the coming-of-age story, the cosy crime caper and the state-of-the-nation novel with Coe’s trademark humour and warmth. From one of Britain’s finest living novelists, this is a witty, razor-sharp novel which explores how the key to understanding the present can often be found in the murkiest corners of the past.

British novelists love to diagnose the state of the nation. Few do it better than Jonathan Coe, who writes with warmth and subversive glee about social change

Few contemporary writers can make a success of the state of the nation novel: Jonathan Coe is one of them

Coe has the great gift of combining engaging human stories with a deeper structural pattern that gives the book its heft

Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. The author of political satires such as What a Carve Up! and Number 11, and family sagas such as The Rotters' Club and The Rain Before It Falls, his novels have won prizes at home and abroad, including the Costa Novel of the Year and the Prix du Livre Européen (both for Middle England).

When Phyl, a young literature graduate, moves back home with her parents, she soon finds herself frustrated by the narrow horizons of English country life. As for her plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere. But the chance discovery of a forgotten novelist from the 1980s stirs her into action, as does a visit from her uncle Richard - especially when he tells her that he’s working on a political story that might put his life in danger. 
 
Richard has been following the careers of a group of students, all present at Cambridge University in the 1980s, now members of a think-tank which has been quietly pushing the British government towards extremism. And now, after years in the political wilderness, they might be in a position to put their ideas into action. 
 
As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new Prime Minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Richard pursues his story to a mysterious conference taking place deep in the Cotswolds. When Phyl hears that one of the delegates has been murdered, she begins to wonder if real life is starting to merge with the novel she’s been trying to write. But does the explanation really lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old? 
 
Darting between decades and genres, THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE reimagines the coming-of-age story, the cosy crime caper and the state-of-the-nation novel with Coe’s trademark humour and warmth. From one of Britain’s finest living novelists, this is a witty, razor-sharp novel which explores how the key to understanding the present can often be found in the murkiest corners of the past.

Jonathan  Coe

‘As funny as anything Coe has written’ The Times Literary Supplement

On Millennium night, with Blair presiding over a superficially cool, sexed-up new version of the country, Benjamin Trotter finds himself watching the celebrations on his parents' TV. Watching, in fact, his younger brother, Paul, now a bright young New Labour MP who has bought wholeheartedly into the Blairite dream. Neither of them can know that their lives are about to implode. 
 
Set against the backdrop of a changing Britain and the country's increasingly compromised role in America's 'war against terrorism', the characters struggle to make sense of the perennial problems of love, vocation and family.

Jonathan Coe

The Closed Circle

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