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Number 11
Number 11
Nov 13, 2025 8:41 PM

Author:Jonathan Coe

Number 11

This is a novel about the hundreds of tiny connections between the public and private worlds and how they affect us all.

It's about the legacy of war and the end of innocence.

It's about how comedy and politics are battling it out and comedy might have won.

It's about how 140 characters can make fools of us all.

It's about living in a city where bankers need cinemas in their basements and others need food banks down the street.

It is Jonathan Coe doing what he does best ­- showing us how we live now.

'Coe is among the handful of novelists who can tell us something about the temper of our times' Observer

Reviews

Coe is back doing what he does best. Number 11 is a baroquely plotted, densely allusive, heart-on-his-sleeve, state-of-the-nation satire, an angry and exuberant book....Coe is not just back, but back on top form

—— Sunday Times

You can't stop reading....I was haunted for days

—— The Independent

Coe's prose is always a delight...hugely enjoyable

—— Daily Mail

Jonathan Coe has established himself as one of the most entertaining chroniclers of our times. . . He has an enviable lightness of touch and is brilliant at portraying the lunacy of our time, when bankers need iceberg houses and their neighbours need food banks. He is often satirical, always compassionate.

—— Tatler

He brings us the usual high quotient of jokes, emotional engagement with the characters and commitment to old-school storytelling, complete with narrative twists and thrilling set pieces

—— The Daily Telegraph

An incredibly Dickensian novel...it articulates all kinds of themes that will make the reader feel very angry...I enjoyed it hugely and read it pretty much in a single sitting. Whenever there was an interruption I felt really angry and you can't really ask more from a novel than that...Really satisfying

—— Tom Holland, BBC Radio 4

Jonathan Coe rips into modern celebrity culture and the decadent lives of the super-rich in hs latest satire

—— Good Housekeeping

A restlessness would overtake me when I was separated from the book

—— Kit Davis, BBC Radio 4

No modern novelist is better at charting the precariousness of middle-class life

—— The Observer

Coe creeps up stealthily, delivering a book bursting with narrative coups and delicious ironies. Presenting a picture of an ailing country close to collapse, despite the apparent health suggested by its millionaires' mansions and its confidently callous politicians, the book scares rather than laughs us into calling for reform

—— Literary Review

Coe intriguingly depicts the social grievances of modern Britain

—— Metro

My first Jonathan Coe book but it won't be the last...gloriously insane...It takes you into another space and time....Very beautiful

—— Kerry Shale, BBC Radio 4

It's dispiriting that, for a country that prides itself on its sense of humour, Coe has not been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.....Read Number 11 to see what an odd country Britain has become

—— T2

[Coe] has a fine ear for dialogue and mastery of comic plot: this is first-class entertainment

—— Evening Standard

The country needs Number 11....[Coe's] take-down of modern Britain proves he's still the UK's premiere national lampoon

—— Stylist

Number 11 is undoubtedly a political novel. It is also an interrogation of the purposes and efficacy of humour in exposing society's ills

—— Guardian

A richly enjoyable, densely textured and thought-provoking entertainment, Number 11 might not feature in many Kensington mansions, Swiss bolt-holes or private jets this winter. But perhaps it should'

—— Financial Times

What Victorians called "a condition of England" novel...This sequel is a very good book indeed - let's hope that Coe goes for a trilogy

—— The Times

Richly textured

—— Esquire

Undoubtedly a political novel. It is also an interrogation of the purposes and efficacy of humour in exposing society's ills

—— Guardian

[A] state-of-the-nation address

—— Independent on Sunday

Jonathan Coe has taken aim at the absurdity of modern life

—— Sport

In Satin Island the narrator, U, takes us on a journey through the modern world of ideas, theories and references. It’s a wonderfully intense experience – as soon as I’d finished I wanted to read it again.

—— Edith Bowman , Radio Times

Convincing proof that the best writers of our time are anthropologists.

—— Anna Aslanyan , The Spectator

Favourite novel of 2015.

—— John Banville , Observer

A darkly funny and disturbing meditation on the intricacies and insubstantiality of our technology-ridden times. McCarthy is one of the most daring, most ambitious and most subtle of what at my age I can all the younger generation of writers.

—— John Banville , Irish Times

The novel often reads like a dramatic monologue, a very modern stream of consciousness, akin to Joyce’s Finnegans Wake… McCarthy’s novel is innovative, well crafted and challenging… This novel is breaking new ground, a breath of fresh air, at times a tour de force.

—— Vincent Hanley , Irish Times

McCarthy has put his finger on something, and he’s nailed it very precisely. It’s how we live now. All the information we process every day. What it’s doing to us.

—— William Leith , Evening Standard
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