Jonathan Coe studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and at the University of Warwick, where he has also taught English Poetry. He lives in London. Once a semi-professional musician and a scholar of progressive and psychedelic rock, he has worked as a freelance journalist and a proofreader, and wrote about jazz and cabaret music. Considered one of the greatest talents in the world of literature, he is seen as heir to Martin Amis and Julian Barnes in terms of his critical and irreverent take on English society. He released his first book, "The Accidental Womman" in 1987, which was followed by some of the most widely read and acclaimed novels in contemporary English literature: "What a Carve Up!" (1994), a firece criticism of the Thatcher era, "The House of Sleep" (1997), which looks at the academic world, "The Rotter's Club" (2001), a portrait of the rotters in the 1970s and "The Closed Circle" (2004), were Coe's piercing glance takes aim at the 2000s. After "The Rain Before It Falls"(2007), an all-female novel, he released further successful works, such as "Expo 58" (2013), the short story collection «Disaccordi imperfetti" (2015) and the novel "Number 11" (2016), "a baroquely plotted, densely allusive [...] state-of-the-nation satire» ("The Sunday Times").

(photo: © Festivaletteratura)