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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.

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What a Carve Up! - a hilarious 1980s political satire by Jonathan Coe

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.

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Coe, Jonathan
Jonathan Coe is the author of twelve novels, all published by Penguin, which include the highly acclaimed bestsellers What a Carve Up!, The House of Sleep,The Rotters´ Club and Number 11. He is also the author of a biography of B.S Johnson, Like a Fiery Elephant, and The Broken Mirror, a children´s book.

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