Childhood friends Rachel and Alison are about to go on a journey into the strange, surreal heart of Britain in the early years of our new century.

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