Audiobooks by Jonathan Coe

Lessons in Harmony: The stunning new novel from the award-winning author of MIDDLE ENGLAND

"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. © Jonathan Coe 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026"

Jonathan Coe (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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The Proof of My Innocence: A hilarious new novel from the bestselling author of Middle England

"Brought to you by Penguin. 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 brilliant, shrewd, satirical novel – gimlet-eyed, funny, very clever and a searchingly profound look at the state of this strange country of ours' William Boyd 'My comfort read: anything by Jonathan Coe' Bob Mortimer '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' Evening Standard 'A novelist who gains in range and reputation with every book' Pat Barker '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 ©2024 Jonathan Coe (P)2024 Penguin Audio"

Jonathan Coe (Author), Alana Maria, Charlotte Worthing, Mark Stobbart, Roy McMillan, Sam Woolf (Narrator)

Audiobook

Bournville: A moving, brutally funny portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family by the award-winning author of Middle England

"Brought to you by Penguin. From the bestselling, award-winning author of Middle England comes a profoundly moving, brutally funny and brilliantly true portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family '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? Bournville is a rich and poignant new novel from the bestselling, Costa award-winning author of Middle England. It is the story of a woman, of a nation's love affair with chocolate, of Britain itself. PRAISE FOR MIDDLE ENGLAND 'Brilliantly funny . . . a compelling state of the nation novel' Economist 'A comedy for our times' Guardian 'Very funny. . . a writer of uncommon decency' Observer 'The great chronicler of Englishness' Independent © 2022 Jonathan Coe (P)2022 Penguin Audio"

Jonathan Coe (Author), Cara Horgan, Peter Caulfield (Narrator)

Audiobook

Mr Wilder and Me: A sun-soaked historical coming-of-age set behind the scenes of a Hollywood film production

"Brought to you by Penguin. From the prize-winning, bestselling author of 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 realisation 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? Praise for Jonathan Coe 'Coe is a writer of uncommon decency' Observer 'Brilliantly funny' Economist 'Superb' Times 'Very, very funny' Stylist © Jonathan Coe 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020"

Jonathan Coe (Author), Kristin Atherton (Narrator)

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The Closed Circle: The hilarious sequel to The Rotters' Club from the bestselling author of Middle England

"Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe, read by Nicholas Burns. 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 (Author), Nicholas Burns (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Rotters' Club: A comic coming of age tale from the bestselling author of Middle England

"Brought to you by Penguin. Unforgettably funny and painfully honest, Jonathan Coe's tale of Benjamin Trotter and his friends' coming of age during the 1970s is a heartfelt celebration of the joys and agonies of growing up. Featuring, among other things, IRA bombs, prog rock, punk rock, bad poetry, first love, love on the side, prefects, detention, a few bottles of Blue Nun, lots of brown wallpaper, industrial strife, and divine intervention in the form of a pair of swimming trunks. Set against the backdrop of the decade's class struggles, tragic and riotous by turns, packed with thwarted romance and furtive sex, The Rotters' Club is for anyone who ever experienced adolescence the hard way."

Jonathan Coe (Author), Nicholas Burns (Narrator)

Audiobook

The House of Sleep

"Brought to you by Penguin. 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 ... © Jonathan Coe 2008 (P) Penguin Audio 2019"

Jonathan Coe (Author), Sophie Ward (Narrator)

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The Rain Before it Falls: A mesmerizing novel about three generations of one family torn apart by tragedy and secrets

"Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Rain Before it Falls written by Jonathan Coe, read by Jenny Agutter. '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."

Jonathan Coe (Author), Jenny Agutter (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim: A heart-breaking and hilarious novel about one man’s midlife unravelling

"Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim written by Jonathan Coe, read by John Heffernan. 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 though he has 74 friends on Facebook. He's not even sure whether he's got a job until suddenly a strange business proposition comes his way which involves 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."

Jonathan Coe (Author), John Heffernan (Narrator)

Audiobook

What a Carve Up!: A wickedly funny take on life under the Thatcher government by the award-winning author of Middle England

"Penguin presents the audiobook edition of What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe, read by Richard Goulding. 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. . . This wickedly funny take on life under the Thatcher government was the winner of the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize '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 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, The Accidental Woman, 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 (Author), Richard Goulding (Narrator)

Audiobook

Middle England: The hilarious Costa Novel award-winning satire novel

"Brought to you by Penguin. Costa Best Novel Award 2019 Winner. It was tempting to think, at times like this, that some bizarre hysteria had gripped the British people. 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. Middle England is read by Rory Kinnear. 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. ©2018 Jonathan Coe (P)2018 Penguin Books Ltd"

Jonathan Coe (Author), Rory Kinnear (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Touch of Love

"Penguin presents the audiobook edition of A Touch of Love by Jonathan Coe, read by Peter Caulfield. Robin, a postgrad 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 ..."

Jonathan Coe (Author), Peter Caulfield (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks by Jonathan Coe

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