WHAT A CARVE UP! PENGUIN STREET ART PB

The hilarious 1980s political satire by Jonathan Coe, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 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