Expo 58 - Softcover

Jonathan Coe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241968860 ISBN 13: 9780241968864

Publisher: Penguin Export, 2014

Synopsis

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 Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. Expo 58 is his tenth novel. The previous nine are all available in Penguin: The Accidental Woman, A Touch of Love, The Dwarves of Death, What a Carve Up! (which won the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), The House of Sleep (which won the 1998 Prix Medicis Etranger), The Rotters' Club (winner of the Everyman Wodehouse Prize), The Closed Circle, The Rain Before It Falls and The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim. His biography of the novelist B.S. Johnson, Like a Fiery Elephant, won the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize for best non-fiction book of the year. Expo 58 was nominated for the 2015 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

About this title

About the Author:

Jonathan Coe is the author of eleven novels, all published by Penguin, which include the highly acclaimed bestsellers What a Carve Up!, The House of Sleep and The Rotters' Club. His most recent novel is Number 11.

Review:

“Expo 58, like Our Man in Havana and all the best comic novels, reminds us that comedy is not the sugar that makes the medicine go down. Comedy is the medicine—medicine that exists not to cure you but to make you realize, once the medicine wears off, how sick you really are.” —New York Times Book Review

“[A] rip-roaringly funny satire by Coe.” —Kirkus, Starred Review

“Like the best books of this kind, Expo 58 is funny and smart...a light, blessedly short, dry English satire.” —Booklist, Starred review

“Coe is a gifted satirist...a droll, clever novel that ends on a bittersweet note...impressive” —Publishers Weekly

“Coe’s Expo 58 is a world of fakery and illusion.” —LA Review of Books

“Expo 58 is Coe at his funny-serious best, offering idiosyncratic mixture of slapstick and profundity in a love-and-spies story set at the height of the cold war...pure enjoyment.” —Financial Times

“Brilliant and satisfying... This is entertainment of a very high order, and all the more delightful for being grounded in the more bizarre dimensions of reality, the inspiration of all the best fiction.” —Robert McCrum, The Guardian

“Delightfully funny and utterly absurd...tremendously good fun.” —The Spectator

“A rich and splendidly comic confection.” —Independent

“Masterful English novelist...Coe serves another of his absorbingly comic romps [in Expo 58].” —The Oregonian

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Export
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0241968860
• ISBN 13: 9780241968864
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 274