Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He is the award-winning, bestselling author of fifteen novels, including What a Carve Up!, The Rotters' Club, Middle England, The Proof of My Innocence and Lessons in Harmony. He has won the Costa Novel Award, the Prix du Livre Européen, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Prix Médicis Étranger and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, among many others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages. Jonathan Coe lives in London.