About this item
A comic spy caper and international love story, set in Europe in the middle of the last century, Expo 58 is the latest sublime creation by Jonathan Coe, hailed by Nick Hornby as probably the best English novelist of his generation. Handsome, unassuming Thomas Foley is an employee at the Central Office of Information whose particular biography Belgian mother, pub-owning father makes him just the man to oversee the authentic British pub that will be erected at the 1958 Brussels Worlds Fair. Its the first major expo after World War II, meant to signify unity, but theres inevitable intrigue involving the U.S. and Soviet delegations. In the shadow of an immense, imposingly modern structure called the Atomium, the married Foley becomes both agent and pawnwhen hes not falling head over heels for Anneke, his Belgian hostess.
About the Author
Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. His novels include What a Carve Up!, The House of Sleep, The Rotters' Club, The Rain Before It Falls and Number 11. He has won many literary prizes at home and abroad, and his biography of the writer BS Johnson, Like A Fiery Elephant, won the Samuel Johnson Prize. Feature films have been made of his novels The Dwarves of Death (as Five Seconds To Spare) and The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim (as La vie très privée de Monsieur Sim) . The Rotters' Club was adapted for BBC television in 2005, starring Sarah Lancashire, Alice Eve and Kevin Doyle.In 2017 he published a novella for children, The Broken Mirror.Hie latest novel, MIDDLE ENGLAND, published by Penguin in November 2018, reintroduces characters from The Rotters' Club and puts them against a background of real events in the UK before and after the Brexit referendum.
