Jonathan Coe – författare

''Probably the best English novelist of his generation'' Nick HornbyJonathan 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 TelegraphDownloadable, abridged audiobook edition read by Jeff Rawle.

Jonathan Coe''s previous novel, The Rotters'' Club, was a novel of innocence: a nostalgic, humorous evocation of adolescent life in 1970s Britain. The Closed Circle is its mirror image: a novel of experience. 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 in the same Birmingham house in which he grew up. 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 Britain''s racial and social tensions and the country''s increasingly compromised role in America''s ''war against terrorism'', The Closed Circle shuttles between London and Birmingham, taking in fat cats, media advisers and political protestors. As its characters struggle to make sense of the perennial problems of love, vocation and family in a changing world, it offers a bitter-sweet conclusion to the unfinished business of The Rotters'' Club.''Wonderful, hilarious ... so appealing that the last cruel thing about it is the ending'' Daily TelegraphDownloadable abridged audiobook edition read by Jeff Rawle.

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 TimesAbridged.Read by Alex Jennings.

From the bestselling author of Middle England and Mr Wilder and Me comes a brilliant new state of the nation novel

In the Birmingham suburb of Bournville, a family celebrate VE Day in 1945. With the joy of such an occasion there also come larger national questions about the nature of the horrific war the country has just been through. Following this family through generations as they navigate seventy-five years of drastic social change, from wartime nostalgia and English exceptionalism to the World Cup and coronavirus, domestic secrets and national myths leave characters and a country adrift, bewildered and divided.

Bournville is the story of who we are - at our worst, and best. From bestselling author Jonathan Coe comes a novel of rare humour and humanity, a novel that holds up a mirror to our past and our present.

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.

The year is 1907 and Maurice Ravel is one of the most admired but also most controversial composers in France. An aloof, dandyish figure, he is at the centre of a group of rebellious artists who call themselves the Apaches. It is considered a scandal that he has never won the Prix de Rome, despite entering compositions for it several times. As for his personal life, he has no known attachments, and no one seems to know whether his romantic leanings incline him towards men, or women, or neither.In December, Ravel takes on a new pupil: a rising British composer who is two years his senior, and has come to Paris for three months specifically to study with him. His name is Ralph Vaughan Williams.The two men could hardly be more different. Ralph is down-to-earth, married, and currently engaged in a long-term project of collecting forgotten British folk songs - a musical form in which Ravel has no interest. All they have in common is that in clear but indefinable ways, each of them seems an archetypal representative of his own country. One of them 'typically French', the other 'so English'. And yet this will be the beginning of a deep friendship - one which will come to symbolise the new, tentative alliance between France and Britain in the run-up to the First World War.

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 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. This story is also available as a Penguin ebook.Text by Jonathan Coe Music by Danny Manners Produced by Ken Brake at Regal Lane Studios