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  • Published: 1 October 2016
  • ISBN: 9780241978917
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $22.99

What a Carve Up!

‘Everything a novel ought to be: courageous, challenging, funny, sad’ The Times




The hilarious 1980s political satire by Jonathan Coe, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time

A brilliant noir farce, a dystopian vision 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, Michael is commissioned to write the family history of the Winshaws, an upper class Yorkshire clan whose members have a finger in every establishment pie. But as a murderous maniac stalks the family, Michael realizes that his favourite film is coming true.

  • Published: 1 October 2016
  • ISBN: 9780241978917
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Jonathan Coe

Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. His novels include Rotters, The Accidental Woman, A Touch of Love, The Dwarves of Death and What a Carve Up!, which won the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Itranger.The House of Sleep won the Writers' Guild Best Fiction Award for 1997.

Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham, UK, in 1961. He began writing at an early age. His first surviving story, a detective thriller called The Castle of Mystery, was written when he was eight. His first published novel was The Accidental Woman in 1987, but it was his fourth, What a Carve Up!, that established his reputation as one of England’s finest comic novelists, winning the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1985 and being translated into many languages. Seven bestselling novels and many other awards have followed, including the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize for Like A Fiery Elephant, a biography of the experimental novelist, B. S. Johnson. Jonathan lives in London with his wife and two daughters.

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