We've rounded up 20 great books we think everyone should read by 50

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Reading lists

20 books everyone should read in their fifties

With the dawn of a new millennium about to break, the Nineties was a strange, floating decade of positivity, hope and something called the World Wide Web. 

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Books that defined the 1990s

The Closed Circle

'Terrific. An incisive portrait of Britain at the turn of the century' SPECTATOR 
 
'Coe's finest achievement since What a Carve up!' TIME OUT 
 
'Popular fiction at its best' DAILY MAIL 
 
 
Discover bestselling author Jonathan Coe's hilarious sequel to The Rotters' Club! 
 
It's the end of the century and Benjamin Trotter and friends are all grown up. 
 
Life is a ceaseless whirl of jobs, marriages, kids - and self-inflicted angst. Despite the shiny optimism of Blair's Britain, youthful hopes and dreams feel betrayed. Is the Government (and by extension Benjamin's MP brother Paul) to blame? Or are the 'rotters' themselves - only passingly faithful to their dreams - really at fault? 
 
The Closed Circle depicts a group of former school friends as older, wiser and disillusioned in Blair's Britain at the turn of the millennium, proving that the present can never truly be disentangled from the past. 
 
 
***Written with his signature wit and warmth, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, LESSONS IN HARMONY is available for pre-order now!

Spectacular. Coe's finest achievement since What a Carve Up!

Wonderful, hilarious … so appealing that the last cruel thing about it is the ending

Superbly funny, extremely readable, entertaining … keeps the pages turning

Richly drawn. Coe has succeeded in accomplishing that rare feat: a pair of novels that combine the addictive quality of the best soap operas with a basic cultural integrity

Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He is the award-winning, bestselling author of fifteen novels, including What a Carve Up!, The Rotters’ Club, Middle England and, most recently, The Proof of My Innocence. He has won the Costa Novel Award, the Prix du Livre Européen, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Prix Médicis Étranger and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, among many others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages. Jonathan Coe lives in London.

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.

The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim

'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 MAIL 
 
Maxwell Sim could be any of us. He could be you. 
 
He's about to have a mid-life crisis (though eh doesn't know it yet). He'll be found in his car in the north of Scotland, half-naked and alone, suffering hypothermia, with a couple of empty whisky bottles and a boot full of toothbrushes. 
 
It's a far cry from a restaurant in Sydney, where his story starts. 
 
But then Maxwell Sim has, unknowingly, got a long way to go. If he knew now about his lonely journey to the Shetland Isles, or the truth about his father and the folded photograph, or the mystery of Poppy and her peculiar job, or even about Emma's lovely, fading voice, then perhaps he's stay where he was - hiding from destiny. 
 
But Max knows none of it. And nor do you - at least not yet. . . 
 
Equal parts funny and moving, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim will be cherished by readers everywhere, from fans of David Nicholls to Will Self. 
 
*** 
 
 
Written with his signature wit and warmth, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, LESSONS IN HARMONY is available for pre-order now!

Cunningly plotted, extremely well-written and very, very funny

As funny and as well-written as you'd expect. It is archly and artfully structured too

Maxwell Sim seems to have hit rock bottom: separated from his wife and daughter, estranged from his father, and with no one to confide in even with 74 friends on Facebook. He's not even sure whether he's got a job until suddenly a strange business proposition comes his way, involving a long journey to the Shetland Isles - and a voyage into his family's past which throws up some surprising revelations. 
 
A story for our times, Maxwell finds himself at sea in the modern world, surrounded by social networks but unable to relate properly to anyone.

Number 11

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. 
 
 
It's about living in a city where bankers need cinemas in their basements and others need food banks down the street. 
 
 
It is Jonathan Coe doing what he does best ­- showing us how we live now. 
 
 
'Coe is among the handful of novelists who can tell us something about the temper of our times' OBSERVER 
 
 
*** 
Written with his signature wit and warmth, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, LESSONS IN HARMONY is available for pre-order now!

Coe is back doing what he does best. Number 11 is a baroquely plotted, densely allusive, heart-on-his-sleeve, state-of-the-nation satire, an angry and exuberant book....Coe is not just back, but back on top form

You can't stop reading....I was haunted for days

Coe's prose is always a delight...hugely enjoyable

Jonathan Coe has established himself as one of the most entertaining chroniclers of our times. . . He has an enviable lightness of touch and is brilliant at portraying the lunacy of our time, when bankers need iceberg houses and their neighbours need food banks. He is often satirical, always compassionate.

He brings us the usual high quotient of jokes, emotional engagement with the characters and commitment to old-school storytelling, complete with narrative twists and thrilling set pieces

An incredibly Dickensian novel...it articulates all kinds of themes that will make the reader feel very angry...I enjoyed it hugely and read it pretty much in a single sitting. Whenever there was an interruption I felt really angry and you can't really ask more from a novel than that...Really satisfying

Jonathan Coe rips into modern celebrity culture and the decadent lives of the super-rich in hs latest satire

A restlessness would overtake me when I was separated from the book

No modern novelist is better at charting the precariousness of middle-class life

Coe creeps up stealthily, delivering a book bursting with narrative coups and delicious ironies. Presenting a picture of an ailing country close to collapse, despite the apparent health suggested by its millionaires' mansions and its confidently callous politicians, the book scares rather than laughs us into calling for reform

Coe intriguingly depicts the social grievances of modern Britain

My first Jonathan Coe book but it won't be the last...gloriously insane...It takes you into another space and time....Very beautiful

It's dispiriting that, for a country that prides itself on its sense of humour, Coe has not been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.....Read Number 11 to see what an odd country Britain has become

[Coe] has a fine ear for dialogue and mastery of comic plot: this is first-class entertainment

The country needs Number 11....[Coe's] take-down of modern Britain proves he's still the UK's premiere national lampoon

Number 11 is undoubtedly a political novel. It is also an interrogation of the purposes and efficacy of humour in exposing society's ills

A richly enjoyable, densely textured and thought-provoking entertainment, Number 11 might not feature in many Kensington mansions, Swiss bolt-holes or private jets this winter. But perhaps it should

What Victorians called "a condition of England" novel...This sequel is a very good book indeed - let's hope that Coe goes for a trilogy

Jonathan Coe has taken aim at the absurdity of modern life

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. 
It's about living in a city where bankers need cinemas in their basements and others need food banks down the street. 
It is Jonathan Coe doing what he does best ­- showing us how we live now.

Mr Wilder and Me

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 nothing. 
 
 While Calista is thrilled with her new adventure, Wilder himself is living with the realisation that his star may be on the wane. Rebuffed by Hollywood, he has financed his film with German money, and when Calista follows him to Munich, she finds herself joining him on a journey of memory into the dark heart of his family history. 
 
At once a tender coming-of-age story and an intimate portrait of a Hollywood icon, Mr Wilder and Me explores the nature of time and fame, of family and the treacherous lure of nostalgia . . . 
__________ 
 
 'Utterly charming, deeply poignant and ultimately uplifting' Mail on Sunday 
 
'Sweeps beautifully from Hollywood to Greece and London' FT, Best Books of 2020 
 
'The dialogue's sharp, the comic timing excellent' Sunday Times

A satisfyingly sweeping novel that still manages to push the form in new directions. As good as anything he's written - a novel to cherish

An account of Billy Wilder's later years that sweeps beautifully from Hollywood to Greece and London while all the time reflecting on the horrors of 20th-century Europe

This elegiac novella is utterly charming, deeply poignant and ultimately uplifting. And yes, it would make a great film

An insightful and moving story about how memories can or cannot be passed down through the generations

A young woman named Calista meets the famed Hollywood director Billy Wilder in the sweltering summer of 1976. She knows nothing about him or his work, but this chance encounter will change her life for good. But while Calista is thrilled with her new adventure, Wilder himself - struggling to raise the money for his next feature film - is living with the realisation that his star may be on the wane. 
 
In this novel - by turns, funny, tender and profoundly truthful - Jonathan Coe turns his gaze to the nature of time, fame, family and nostalgia. When the world is catapulting towards change, do you hold on for dear life or decide it's time to let go?

What a Carve Up!

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 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 and warmth, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, LESSONS IN HARMONY is available for pre-order now!

A sustained feat of humour, suspense and polemic, full of twists and ironies

A riveting social satire on the chattering and all-powerful upper classes

Big, hilarious, intricate, furious, moving

Everything a novel ought to be: courageous, challenging, funny, sad - and peopled with a fine troupe of characters

A grand blast of popular literary entertainment

One of the most ambitious novels I have read in years and one which has pulled off the seemingly impossible trick of managing to be both amiable and angry at the same time

A carve-up of contemporary Britain, What a Carve Up! is also a carve-up of a book, a vertiginous, exquisitely calculated collage of texts-within-texts... one of the few pieces of genuinely political post-modern fiction around

An unusually entertaining novel, as well as being politically ambitious... it manages to switch from one tone to another with extraordinary deftness

Coe effortlessly spans fifty years of British political change in this hugely entertaining novel, packed full of period detail, from forties schoolboy slang to modern media wars

A brilliant noir farce, a dystopian vision and the story of an obsession. Michael is a lonely, rather pathetic writer, obsessed by the film 'What A Carve Up!', in which a mad knifeman cuts his way through the inhabitants of a decrepit stately pile as the thunder rages. 
 
Inexplicably, Michael is commissioned to write the family history of the Winshaws, an upper class Yorkshire clan whose members have a finger in every establishment pie. But as a murderous maniac stalks the family, Michael realizes that his favourite film is coming true.

The Rotters' Club

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, The Rotters' Club is perfect for readers of Nick Hornby and William Boyd - or anyone who ever experience adolescence the hard way! 
 
__________ 
 
'One of those sweeping, ambitious yet hugely readable, moving and richly comic novels . . . a masterpiece' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Very funny . . . Coe had achieved that rare feat: a novel stuffed with characters you really care for' The Times 
 
'A book to cherish, a book to reread, a book to buy for all your friends' Independent on Sunday 
 
Written with his signature wit and warmth, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, LESSONS IN HARMONY is available for pre-order now!

A book to cherish, a book to reread, a book to buy for all your friends

Very funny... a compulsive and gripping read. Coe has achieved that rare feat: a novel stuffed with characters you really care for

One of those sweeping, ambitious yet hugely readable, moving, richly comic novels that you find all too rarely in English fiction ... a masterpiece

Jonathan Coe's widely acclaimed novel is set in the 1970s against a distant backdrop of strikes, terrorist attacks and growing racial tension. A group of young friends inherit the editorship of their school magazine and begin to put their own distinctive spin onto events in the wider world. A zestful comedy of personal and social upheaval, The Rotters' Club captures a fateful moment in British politics - the collapse of 'Old Labour' - and imagines its impact on the topsy-turvy world of the bemused teenager: a world in which a lost pair of swimming trunks can be just as devastating as an IRA bomb.

The Proof of My Innocence

'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 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 he follows this story to a conference in a rambling old hotel deep in the Cotswolds, events take a bizarre and sinister turn. Soon he is caught up in a world of cryptic clues, secret passages and, eventually, murder. 
 
In the end, despite the efforts of a suitably eccentric detective, it falls to Phyl herself – ably assisted by Chris’s outspoken adopted daughter Rashida - to look for answers to the fatal mystery. But will they lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old? 
 
--- 
 
'A new Jonathan Coe is always a treat . . . Coe is a master at exploring the pains of modern life' Rosamund Urwin, The Times 
 
'Please, God … if there’s a next life, let me write as well as Jonathan Coe' Anthony Bourdain 
 
'Probably the best English novelist of his generation' Nick Hornby 
 
'Deeply pleasurable, and a lot of fun. You emerge from it glowing' iPaper 
 
 
Written with his signature wit and warmth, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, LESSONS IN HARMONY is available for pre-order now!

Wonderfully accomplished and darkly funny. The Proof of My Innocence is a murder mystery, a satire on Britain's ever right-ward drift, culminating in Liz Truss; and an inquiry into truth and perception. Jonathan Coe gets better and better

A brilliant, shrewd, satirical novel – gimlet-eyed, funny, very clever and a searchingly profound look at the state of this strange country of ours.

The premier satirist of great British crapness is on killer form in this gag-a-minute mystery - who but Coe would think to structure a book around the abysmal transport police mantra “See It. Say It. Sorted”?

A funny, smart and innovative exploration of contemporary British political dynamics

A wonderfully farcical and absurd book that puts into perspective the political chaos of post-Brexit Britain

Coe is on engaging form… satiric and entertaining brio

Full of energy... a madcap caper, a sideways memoir, a tricksy jeu d’esprit that is also a quiet defence of fiction in a post-truth age, and enormous fun to read

Deeply pleasurable, and a lot of fun. You emerge from it glowing

A new Jonathan Coe is always a treat . . . Coe is a master at exploring the pains of modern life

For many in the UK, the last fourteen years have felt like living in an irredeemably bad novel. How wonderful, then, to mark the changes with Jonathan Coe’s wise and playful reprise of the years in which we lost the plot - and maybe gained some gentleness in its unravelling

As for my own stocking, Jonathan Coe has a new novel out, which is always a cause for celebration… Santa has been informed

My comfort read: anything by Jonathan Coe

A novelist who gains in range and reputation with every book

Absolutely breathtakingly blindingly brilliant!!

Please, God … if there’s a next life, let me write as well as Jonathan Coe

Coe is among the handful of novelists who can tell us something about the temper of our times

I was delighted by Jonathan Coe’s The Proof of My Innocence. It’s clever and political – while also being very funny

Probably the best English novelist of his generation

Coe shows an understanding of this country that goes beyond what most cabinet ministers can muster . . . he is a master of satire but pokes fun subtly, without ever being cruel, biting or blatant . . . his light, funny writing makes you feel better

Fantastic, wickedly funny and gripping, I couldn’t put this down. Coe has written a beautifully crafted mystery that dovetails as a sharp, smart state of the nation novel

A complex and irresistible literary murder mystery

Light as a souffle and tremendously funny

For all its irony, its tricksiness, its surface light-heartedness, The Proof of My Innocence is a novel earnestly using fiction as a way of telling the truth

Coe knows how to write a novel: it is well paced, he makes complex plots look easy, he has a way of marshalling a large cast of characters that never feels contrived, the prose is pleasant and not invasive, and he is — rare for a novelist — funny

Full of humour and warmth, this re-imagining of the cosy crime genre is irresistible

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

Astute, enlightened … Both moving and funny. As we’d expect from Coe

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

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 he follows this story to a conference in a rambling old hotel deep in the Cotswolds, events take a bizarre and sinister turn. Soon he is caught up in a world of cryptic clues, secret passages and, eventually, murder. 
 
In the end, despite the efforts of a suitably eccentric detective, it falls to Phyl herself – ably assisted by Chris’s outspoken adopted daughter Rashida - to look for answers to the fatal mystery. But will they lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old?

Bournville

'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 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 the World Cup final, royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. She'll have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, as modern life and the city crowd in on their peaceful enclave. 
 
As we travel through seventy-five years of social change, from James Bond to Princess Diana, and from wartime nostalgia to the World Wide Web, one pressing question starts to emerge: will these changing times bring Mary's family - and their country - closer together, or leave them more adrift and divided than ever before? 
 
***** 
 
'A beautiful, and often very funny, tribute to an underexamined place and also a truly moving story of how a country discovered tolerance' Sathnam Sanghera, bestselling author of Empireland 
 
'A hugely impressive state-of-the-nation tale' Observer 
 
'This charming read is as warming, rich and comforting as a mug of hot chocolate' The Times 
 
Written with his signature wit and warmth, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, LESSONS IN HARMONY is available for pre-order now!

With his third novel in four years, Coe is on a roll; he tracks the fortunes of a family through snapshots of communal experiences, from the Queen's coronation through the 1966 World Cup to pandemic lockdown, in a moving, compassionate portrait of individual and national change

The way Coe starkly captures the paranoia and fear of the early days of the pandemic is impressive and he has written what he calls a "faithful account" of the death of his mother during lockdown. It makes an intensely affecting finale to a fine novel.

Coe's interwoven paeans to the lives of those rooted in the very centre of the UK - The Rotter's Club and Middle England among them - blend comedy, tragedy and social commentary in enjoyably memorable fashion, and his latest, Bournville, is no exception . . . Coe's particular gift is to understand how nostalgia, regret and an apprehension of what the future will bring might make us more, not less, empathetic to the frailties of those around us

In this affecting generational saga, framed by the pandemic and structured by seven milestone broadcasts, Jonathan Coe - known for his state-of-the-nation novels - once again takes the temperature of Britain

At heart Bournville is a novel designed to make you think by making you laugh, and the seriousness of the subject matter is tempered throughout by the author's piercing eye for the more ludicrous elements of human nature

A compelling social history that's sprinkled throughout with Coe's inimitable humour, love and white-hot anger

A hugely impressive state-of-the-nation tale

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 and the comforting mundanities it imperils

This charming read is as warming, rich and comforting as a mug of hot chocolate

This is another eminently readable Coe, full of believable characters and fizzing dialogue. And it couldn't be more timely

Set in Coe's native 
Midlands and told through the 
lives of four generations of one 
family, beginning with 11-year-old 
Mary in 1945, Bournville is a 
poignant, clever and witty portrait 
of social change and how the 
British see themselves.

Bournville is Jonathan Coe's most ambitious novel yet . . . a novel about people and place. Entertaining and often poignant, it presents a captivating portrait of how Britons lived then and the way they live now

A book of things blended together: comedy with tragedy, England's past with its present, and cocoa solids with vegetable fat . . . the best fictional portrayal of lockdown that I've read

Told with compassion, steadiness, decency and always a glint in the eye, this is a novel that both challenges and delights. For anyone who has felt lost in the past six years, it is like meeting an ally

Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson's Beetle

Coe is an eminently readable novelist

Full of vibrant characters and fabulous dialogue, which switches from laugh-out-loud funny to extremely poignant

The changing face of postwar Britain is brilliantly captured

As the latest in J Coe's Unrest sequence, Bournville is one of the most warm-hearted, brilliant and beguiling of his State of the Nation novels. To show three generations of an ordinary Midlands family, their paths taken and not taken, their friends, lovers, jobs, achievements and losses; to interweave this with 75 years of national history - and to do so with such a lightness of touch is a tremendous achievement. All the absurdities of our nation wrapped up in something as bitter, sweet, and addictive as a bar of the best Bournville chocolate

Affectionate, full of good humour, and often moving, this is Coe at his best.

For all the novel's satirical tang and historical sweep, it's at root a tender portrait of apparently simple folk trying to fathom the mystery of their own personalities

A tender portrayal of the state of the nation through the prism of family relationships

There is much to enjoy here, as in all Coe's novels . . . an intelligent criticism of our shared history since 1945

[Coe] has a huge talent for balancing humour with poignancy

Inside cover printing 
 
'Bournville is Jonathan Coe's most ambitious novel yet . . . a novel about people and place. Entertaining and often poignant, it presents a captivating portrait of how Britons lived then and the way they live now' Economist 
 
'Full of vibrant characters and fabulous dialogue, which switches from laugh-out-loud funny to extremely poignant' Independent 
 
'Set in Coe's native Midlands and told through the lives of four generations of one family, beginning with eleven-year-old Mary in 1945, Bournville is a poignant, clever and witty portrait of social change and how the British see themselves' Radio Times, Best Books of the Year 
 
'Few contemporary writers can make a success of the state of the nation novel: Jonathan Coe is one of them' New Statesman

In 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 seventy-five years of social change, from the Coronation and the World Cup final, to royal weddings, royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. She'll have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, as modern life and the city crowd in on their peaceful enclave. Will these changing times bring Mary's family - and their country - closer together, or leave them more adrift and divided than ever before?

Middle England

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, whilst in London his friend Doug doesn't understand why his teenage daughter is eternally enraged. Meanwhile, newlyweds Sophie and Ian can find nothing to agree on except the fact that their marriage is on the rocks . . . 
 
A hilarious follow-up to The Rotters' Club and Closed Circle, Jonathan Coe captures the state of our nation once again! 
__________________ 
 
'Coe's back with a bang. Middle England is the novel about Brexit we need' Daily Telegraph 
 
'A pertinent, entertaining study of a nation in crisis' Financial Times, Books of the Year 
 
'Very funny. Coe - a writer of uncommon decency - reminds us that the way out of this mess is through moderation, through compromise, through that age-old English ability to laugh at ourselves' Observer 
Written with his signature wit and warmth, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, LESSONS IN HARMONY is available for pre-order now!

Brilliantly funny . . . a compelling state of the nation novel, full of light and shade, which vividly charts modern Britain's tragicomic slide

Expansive and often very funny . . . Coe - a writer of uncommon decency - reminds us that the way out of this mess is through moderation, through compromise, through that age-old English ability to laugh at ourselves

A pertinent, entertaining study of a nation in crisis

His affectionately witty attitude to our human foibles is always uplifting . . . Superb

In Middle England, Coe shows an understanding of this country that goes beyond what most cabinet ministers can muster . . . he subtly builds a picture that exposes the cracks in society . . . he is a master of satire but pokes fun subtly, without ever being cruel, biting or blatant . . . his light, funny writing makes you feel better

Tackling his characters' opposing points of view, he draws a portrait of a recognisable Britain baffled by its loss of industry and jobs, and of everyday people shocked by a rise of acceptable racism and xenophobia. It's also very, very funny

Millions of words have been and will be written on Brexit but few will get to the heart of why it is happening as incisively as Middle England

This is a picture of England that comes from a place of compassion and understanding

Coe is as funny and tender as ever, restoring some humanity to the tumultuous societal backdrop

Middle England combines top-class soap opera storytelling with melancholy insight into what it means to be English

Middle England takes all that is memorable and moving about Coe's body of work and throws it at the present emergency

Sparkled with all the acuity of his best novels . . . Uproarious and always on-the-money

Very funny . . . Exceptionally good . . . Delightful

Middle England is a full-blooded state of the nation novel, and it brings us bang up-to-date

Coe is an extraordinarily deft plotter . . . he tackles big ambitious themes, in this case the effect of politics on people's lives, and political opinions on personal relations

The beauty of Jonathan Coe's new novel, Middle England, is the way it tracks the seemingly unconnected moments that brought Britain to its knees - and with devastating delicacy, too

The great chronicler of Englishness

Coe's comic critique of a divided country dazzles . . . properly laugh-out-loud funny . . . it is also incisive and brilliant about our divided country and the deep chasms revealed by the vote to leave. Do not miss

This book is sublimely good. State of the (Brexit) nation novel to end them all, but also funny, tender, generous, so human and intelligent about age and love as well as politics

Jonathan Coe's Middle England is brilliantly insightful on the times we are living in

Let me add to the chorus of praise for Jonathan Coe's new book Middle England. Easily my favourite of his since What a Carve Up! Which did for Thatcherism what Middle England does for Brexit

An astute, enlightened and enlightening journey into the heart of our current national identity crisis. Both moving and funny. As we'd expect from Coe

From post-industrial Birmingham to the London riots and the current political gridlock, it takes in family, literature and love in a comedy for our times

Coe can make you smile, sigh, laugh; he has abundant sympathy for his characters

This book is sublimely good. State of the (Brexit) nation novel to end them all, but also funny, tender, generous, so human and intelligent about age and love as well as politics

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. 
 
There are newlyweds Ian and Sophie, who disagree about the future of the country and, possibly, the future of their relationship; Doug, the political commentator who writes impassioned columns about austerity from his Chelsea townhouse, and his radical teenage daughter who will stop at nothing in her quest for social justice; Benjamin Trotter, who embarks on an apparently doomed new career in middle age, and his father Colin, whose last wish is to vote in the European referendum. And within all these lives is the story of modern England: a story of nostalgia and delusion; of bewilderment and barely-suppressed rage. 
 
Following in the footsteps of The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle, Jonathan Coe's new novel is the novel for our strange new times.

A Touch of Love

A Touch of Love is Jonathan Coe's delightfully comic and moving novel about not fitting in 
 
Robin, a postgraduate student in Coventry, has spent four and a half years not writing his thesis. He and his academic colleagues, united by pallor, social ineptitude and sexual inexperience, once spent hours discussing their theories, but they somehow never made it into print. 
 
Now his unfinished thesis languishes in a drawer, and Robin hides in his room, increasingly frightened by a world he doesn't understand. His friends have failed him and romance eludes him. His only outlet is his short stories, scribbled in notebooks and expressing his secret obsessions and frustrations. 
 
Then, when an unfortunate and embarrassing incident in a public park lands him in serious trouble, Robin's life finally spirals out of control. . . 
 
A Touch of Love is a brilliant, bittersweet book that will be enjoyed by readers of David Nicholls, Nick Hornby and lovers of comic fiction. 
 
'A magnetic, moving tale' Observer 
 
'Very funny' The Times Literary Supplement 
 
'Witty and astringently intelligent' Guardian 
 
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!

Robin, a postgrad student in Coventry, has spent four and a half years not writing his thesis. Now it languishes in a drawer, and Robin hides in his room, increasingly frightened by a world he doesn't understand. His friends have failed him and romance eludes him. His only outlet is his short stories, scribbled in notebooks and expressing his secret obsessions and frustrations. 
 
Then, when an unfortunate and embarassing incident in a public park lands him in serious trouble, Robin's life finally spirals out of control . . .

The Accidental Woman

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!

For Maria, nothing is certain. Her life is a chain of accidents. Friendship passes her by, and she's unimpressed by the devoted Ronny and his endless propsals of marriage. Maria lives in a world of her own - yet not of her own making. Stumbling through university, work, marriage and motherhood, she finds it hard to see what all the fuss is about. 
 
Will she ever be able to control the direction of her life? Or will it end, as it began, by accident? What does chance have in store for the accidental woman?

The House of Sleep

The House of Sleep - Jonathan Coe's comic tale of love and obsession 
 
Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid she mistakes them for real events; Robert has his life changed for ever by the misunderstandings arising from her condition; Terry, the insomniac, spends his wakeful nights fuelling his obsession with movies; and the increasingly unstable Dr Gregory Dudden sees sleep as a life-shortening disease which must be eradicated. . . 
 
A group of students sharing a house. They fall in and out of love, they drift apart. Yet a decade later they are drawn back together by a series of coincidences involving their obsession with sleep - and each other. . . 
 
Winner of the 1998 Prix Médicis Étranger, The House of Sleep is an intensely moving and frequently hilarious novel about love, obsession and sleep. 
 
'Moving, clever, pleasurable, smart...one of the best books of the year' Malcolm Bradbury, The Times 
 
'There are bits that make you laugh out loud and others that make your heart ache' Guardian 
 
'Fiercely clever, witty, wise, hopeful...a compellingly beautiful tale of love and loss' The Times Literary Supplement. 
 
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 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. 
 
Written with his signature wit, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, The Proof of My Innocence is available now!

Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid she mistakes them for real events; Robert has had his life changed for ever by the misunderstandings arising from her condition; Terry, the insomniac, spends his wakeful nights fuelling his obsession with movies; and the increasingly unstable Dr Gregory Dudden sees sleep as a life-shortening disease which must be eradicated . 
 
A group of students sharing a house. They fall in and out of love, they drift apart. Yet a decade later they are drawn back together by a series of coincidences involving their obsession with sleep - and each other ...

The Dwarves of Death

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. 
 
Written with his signature wit, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, The Proof of My Innocence is available now!

Music, murder ... and Madeleine. 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 unpressed record. 
 
Secondly, there's Madeleine, 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. A man lies bludgeoned to death at his feet and, unfortunately for William, there aren't too many other suspects standing nearby...

Expo 58

Expo 58 by Jonathan Coe - Spies, girls and an Englishman abroad. Trust no one. 
 
London, 1958: unassuming civil servant Thomas Foley is plucked from his desk job and sent on a six-month trip to Brussels. His task: to keep an eye on The Britannia, a brand new pub which will form the heart of the British presence at Expo 58 - the biggest World's Fair of the century. 
 
As soon as he arrives, Thomas is equally bewitched by the surreal, gigantic Atomium, which stands at the heart of this brave new world, and by Anneke, a lovely Flemish hostess. But Thomas's new-found sense of freedom comes at a price: two British spies are following him. 
 
For fans of Jonathan Coe's classic comic bestsellers What a Carve Up! and The Rotters' Club, this hilarious new novel, which is set in the Mad Men period of the mid 50s, will also be loved by readers of Nick Hornby, William Boyd and Ian McEwan. 
 
'Clever and funny, enthralling and moving. Wonderful!' Daily Mail 
 
'Rich and splendidly comic' Independent 
 
Written with his signature wit, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, The Proof of My Innocence, is available to order now!

London, 1958: unassuming civil servant Thomas Foley is plucked from his desk job and sent on a six-month trip to Brussels. His task: to keep an eye on The Britannia, a brand new pub which will form the heart of the British presence at Expo 58 - the biggest World's Fair of the century. 
 
As soon as he arrives, Thomas is equally bewitched by the surreal, gigantic Atomium, which stands at the heart of this brave new world, and by Anneke, a lovely Flemish hostess. But Thomas's new-found sense of freedom comes at a price: two British spies are following him.

The Rain Before it Falls

The Rain Before it Falls - Jonathan Coe's heartbreaking novel of family secrets 
 
Deeply moving and compelling, The Rain Before it Falls is the story of three generations of one family riven by tragedy. When Rosamund, a reluctant bearer of family secrets, dies suddenly, a mystery is left for her niece Gill to unravel. Some photograph albums and tapes point towards a blind girl named Imogen whom no one has seen in twenty years. The search for Imogen and the truth of her inheritance becomes a shocking story of mothers and daughters and of how sadness, like a musical refrain, may haunt us down the years. 
 
'Spectacular, heartbreaking, beautifully written. Rosamund's story is one of the most extraordinary and compelling you will ever read. Impossible to put down, I loved every minute of it' Sunday Express 
 
'A sad, often very moving story of mothers and daughters' Guardian 
 
'Entirely compelling...the plot will keep you rapt...reminiscent of Ian McEwan at his most effective' New Statesman 
 
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!

Spectacular, heartbreaking, beautifully written. Rosamund's story is one of the most extraordinary and compelling you will ever read. Impossible to put down, I loved every minute of it

Entirely compelling . . . the plot will keep you rapt . . . reminiscent of Ian McEwan at his most effective

A sad, often very moving story of mothers and daughters

A hauntingly melancholy tale of love and loss...a moving exploration of the inheritance of unhappiness, and the devestating consequences it can have for future generations

Potent and melancholy, like a short, sad song

A male writer who can enter such traditionally female territory and aquit himself with such aplomb

'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 granddaughter, who turned up mysteriously at her party all those years ago. This is a story of generations, of the relationships within a family - and of what goes to make a child.

Loggerheads and Other Stories

Jonathan Coe is not a prolific writer of short stories - the seven in this collection make up his entire output (as against ten published novels) - but each one is a jewel of storytelling and characterization. And each could only have come from the pen of the novelist Coe. In fact at least three of the stories here, though self-contained, are part of a larger project to depict the history of a fictional Midlands family, a project which includes the novels The Rain Before It Falls and Expo 58. Loggerheads is therefore essential reading for all fans of Coe.

Non-fiction, 1990-2013

Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements

Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements by Jonathan Coe - an extraordinary non-fiction collection from the author of EXPO 58 
 
From 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 memory from one of Britain's most acclaimed novelists and cultural thinkers. 
 
This will be loved by fans of What A Carve Up and The Rotters' Club, as well as readers of Nick Hornby, David Foster Wallace and Zadie Smith's Changing My Mind. 
 
'Clever and funny, enthralling and moving, this is, for my money, Coe's best novel since What A Carve-Up! Wonderful' Daily Mail on Expo 58 
 
'A rich and splendidly comic confection' Independent on EXPO 58 
 
Jonathan Coe is the author of ten novels, the latest Expo 58 (2013). His previous nine novels are all published by Penguin and include the acclaimed bestsellers What a Carve Up!, The House of Sleep and The Rotters' Club.

'I decided to divide the collection into two halves: the first consists of pieces mainly on individual writers, musicians or filmmakers; the second consists of autobiographical works, expanded to include a few reflections on politics, general literary issues and sometimes my own writing. 
 
Each half has a specific character. Many (if not most) of the figures discussed in Part One are outside the mainstream or the canon: they have been marginalised either by their gender, their aesthetic, by some awkwardness of temperament or even (from the British point of view) simply by having the bad manners to write in a language other than English. Hence 'Marginal Notes'. In Part Two I noticed there was another emerging theme: the importance of doubt to (my) writing, its potential as both a liberating and an inhibiting force, culminating in my Tolkien lecture on this subject. Hence 'Doubtful Statements'.' - - Jonathan Coe, July 2013

A Story of Music

Pentatonic

Jonathan Coe's Pentatonic is a daring and original story about family and memory inspired by music. 
 
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 the physical reminder of his past and the mother longs to forget her own, they confront the breakdown of their marriage in the present. 
 
In Pentatonic, Jonathan Coe movingly explores the memories that unite us and the experiences that drive us apart. The story is simultaneously available as a digital download with the piece of music which originally inspired the story. 
 
Praise for Jonathan Coe: 
 
'Probably the best English novelist of his generation' Nick Hornby 
 
'Coe has huge powers of observation and enormous literary panache' Sunday Times 
 
'Jonathan Coe's a fine writer who seems to try something new with every book' David Nicholls 
 
Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He is the author of eight bestselling novels including What a Carve Up! and The Rotters' Club, and a biography of the novelist B. S. Johnson, Like a Fiery Elephant, which won the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize for best non-fiction book of the year.

Coe has huge powers of observation and enormous literary panache

Jonathan Coe's a fine writer who seems to try something new with every book

There are bits that make you laugh out loud and others which make your heart ache

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 the physical reminder of his past and the mother longs to forget her own, they confront the breakdown of their marriage in the present. 
 
In Pentatonic, Jonathan Coe movingly explores the memories that unite us and the experiences that drive us apart. The story is simultaneously available as a digital download with the piece of music which originally inspired the story.

'Probably the best English novelist of his generation' Nick Hornby 
 
Jonathan Coe's widely acclaimed novel is set in the 1970s against a distant backdrop of strikes, terrorist attacks and growing racial tension. A group of young friends inherit the editorship of their school magazine and begin to put their own distinctive spin onto events in the wider world. A zestful comedy of personal and social upheaval, The Rotters' Club captures a fateful moment in British politics - the collapse of 'Old Labour' - and imagines its impact on the topsy-turvy world of the bemused teenager: a world in which a lost pair of swimming trunks can be just as devastating as an IRA bomb. 
 
'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 
 
Downloadable, abridged audiobook edition read by Jeff Rawle.

What A Carve Up!

The downloadable audiobook edition of Jonathan's Coe satirical masterpiece, What a Carve Up! 
 
A brilliant noir farce, a dystopian vision of Britain, a family history and the story of an obsession. Michael is a lonely, rather pathetic writer, obsessed by the film, 'What A Carve Up!' in which a mad knifeman cuts his way through the inhabitants of a decrepit stately pile as the thunder rages. Inexplicably he is commissioned to write the family history of the Winshaws, an upper class Yorkshire clan whose members have a finger in every establishment pie, from arms dealing to art dealing, from politics to banking to the popular press and factory farming. During his researches Michael realises that the Winshaws have cast a blight on his life, as they have on Britain. His confidence, his sexual and personal identity begin to reform. In a climax set in the Winshaw's family seat the novel turns into the film, 'What A Carve Up!' as a murderous maniac stalks the family and Michael discovers the significance of Shirley Eaton's lingerie. 
 
'Everything a novel ought to be: courageous, challenging, funny, sad - and peopled with a fine troupe of characters' The Times 
 
Abridged. 
 
Read by Alex Jennings.

Jonathan Coe

Probably the best English novelist of his generation'

Please God... if there is a next life, let me write as well as Jonathan Coe

Coe’s light, funny writing makes you feel better

Lessons In Harmony, the story of the bond between two giants of twentieth century music, is as witty, lapidary and elegant as a Ravel miniature and as rich and deep as Vaughan Williams at his most lyrical. With his love of music, European culture and the foibles of Britishness, Jonathan Coe is uniquely equipped to craft this story of male friendship, art, love and nationhood.

I was completely convinced and engrossed by the fictional reconstruction of the friendship between those two very different composers. The writing has all the subtlety and wit that is customary for Jonathan Coe, but rare, and there is so much wisdom in it - about the sacrifices demanded of the friends and partners in the orbit of a musical genius, about rivalry, disappointment, and the convulsions of world politics.

The 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 mysterious personal life. 
 
When Ravel’s devoted acolyte Mylo encourages him to take on a new pupil – a rising British composer called Ralph Vaughan Williams – an unlikely cross-channel friendship starts to blossom. An aristocratic Englishman and collector of folk songs, Vaughan Williams appears to have nothing in common with his teacher except that, somehow, each of them seems to represent an archetype of his own country. 
 
But as the shadow of war approaches, their friendship becomes entwined with Mylo’s own tragic story. The two friends must pursue their vocation through one of the most turbulent but creative periods in history. Will their differing senses of national identity – one ‘typically French’, the other ‘so British’ – liberate or constrain them? 
 
LESSONS IN HARMONY is a stunning novel about the power of music to create beauty, to freeze time, and, at its greatest, to express the personality not just of its composer, but of an entire nation.

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