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  • Published: 27 August 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241967775
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $29.99

The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim




A lonely toothbrush salesman goes on a journey into the wilderness and a descent into a mad world, in this comic and surreal novel from one of our greatest British writers

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.

  • Published: 27 August 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241967775
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Jonathan Coe

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.

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Praise for The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim

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

Daily Telegraph

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

Prospect