Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Zimberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblath.

This is Bookworm, and today I'm very happy because I'm giddy.

I'm giddy because Jonathan Coe, a British writer who, to my mind, is hilarious.

He makes me giddy.

He's published a new book.

It's called Expo 58.

Well, you know, it's what British humor should be.

And as any British humorist should, he's won a Peugee Woodhouse Award.

Woodhouse rhymes with Good House, not Roadhouse.

And it takes us, well, tell us where it takes place.

It takes place rather bizarrely, perhaps, at the Brussels World's Fair of 1958, which was the first World's Fair after the Second World War.

And a great moment, really, in Belgian history and European history are coming together of different nations for cultural exchange, commercial exchange, at the height, of course, of the

Cold War, 1958.

But despite that, it's not, as you were implying in your introduction.

It's not exactly a European novel.

It's an intensely British novel.

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