Interior designer and television host Jeremiah Brent explores the emotional meaning of home in this warm and inviting book that illuminates what make peoples’ spaces so personally significant.

For many of us, our houses are more than just dwellings where we stash our belongings.

A blistering political critique wrapped up in a murder mystery - from the bestselling author of MIDDLE ENGLAND Post-university life doesn't suit Phyl. Time passes slowly living back home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to holidaymakers at Heathrow's Terminal 5. As for her budding plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere. That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He's been on the path to uncover a sinister think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that's been scheming to push the British government in a more extreme direction. One that's finally poised to put their plans into action. But speaking truth to power can be dangerous - and power will stop at nothing to stay on top. As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new Prime Minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Chris pursues his story to a conference being held deep in the Cotswolds, where events take a sinister turn and a murder enquiry is soon in progress. But will the solution to the mystery 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 is a wickedly funny and razor-sharp new novel from one of Britain's most beloved novelists, showing how the key to understanding the present can often be found in the murkiest corners of the past.

Details

ISBN13: 9780241678428
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 352
Edition:
Publication Date: 19 Nov 2024
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 232(H)x153(L)x26(W)425
Weight (gm): 425

Author Biography

Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He is the award-winning, bestselling author of 14 novels, which include The Accidental Woman, What a Carve Up!, The House of Sleep, The Rotters' Club, The Rain Before It Falls, Expo 58, Middle England, Mr Wilder and Me and Bournville. He has won the Costa Novel Award, the Prix du Livre Europeen, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Prix Medicis tranger 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 22 languages. Suspended Moment, an album of his musical compositions recorded live in Italy, was released on the British Progressive Jazz label in 2023. Jonathan Coe lives in London.

Reviews

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 -- Luke Harding
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
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”? * Observer *
A funny, smart and innovative exploration of contemporary British political dynamics -- Nussaibah Younis
A wonderfully farcical and absurd book that puts into perspective the political chaos of post-Brexit Britain * Foyles *
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 * Guardian *
Deeply pleasurable, and a lot of fun. You emerge from it glowing -- iPaper
A new Jonathan Coe is always a treat . . . Coe is a master at exploring the pains of modern life -- Rosamund Urwin * The Times *
Endlessly satisfying * Spectator *
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 -- Lyndsey Stonebridge