Book description
The House of Sleep - Jonathan Coe's comic tale of love and obsession
Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid she mistakes them for
real events; Robert has his life changed for ever by the
misunderstandings arising from her condition; Terry, the insomniac,
spends his wakeful nights fuelling his obsession with movies; and the
increasingly unstable Dr Gregory Dudden sees sleep as a
life-shortening disease which must be eradicated. . .
A group of students sharing a house. They fall in and out of love,
they drift apart. Yet a decade later they are drawn back together by a
series of coincidences involving their obsession with sleep - and each
other. . .
Winner of the 1998 Prix M dicis tranger, The House of
Sleep is an intensely moving and frequently hilarious novel about
love, obsession and sleep.
'Moving, clever, pleasurable, smart...one of the best books of the
year' Malcolm Bradbury, The Times
'There are bits that make you laugh out loud and others that make
your heart ache' Guardian
'Fiercely clever, witty, wise, hopeful...a compellingly beautiful
tale of love and loss' The Times Literary Supplement
Jonathan Coe's novels are filled with biting political satire,
moving and astute observations of life and hilarious set pieces that
have made him one of the most popular writers of his generation. His
other titles, The Accidental Woman, The Rotters' Club
(winner of the Everyman Wodehouse prize), The Closed Circle,
The Dwarves of Death, What a Carve Up! (winner of the
1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize) and The Rain Before it Falls,
are all available as Penguin paperback.
Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. His most recent novel is
The Rain Before It Falls
. He is also the author of
The Accidental Woman
,
A Touch of Love
,
The Dwarves of Death
,
What a Carve Up!
, which won the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize,
The House of Sleep
, which won the 1998 Prix Medicis Etranger,
The Rotter's Club
, winner of the Everyman Wodehouse Prize and
The Closed Circle.
He has also published a biography of the novelist B. S. Johnson, which
won the Orwell prize in 2005. He lives in London with his wife and two
children.
