Expo 58

London, 1958: unassuming civil servant Thomas Foley is plucked from his desk and sent on a six-month trip to Brussels. His task: to keep an eye on The Britannia, a brand new pub which will form the heart of the British presence at the World's Fair, Expo 58.

As soon as he arrives at the site, Thomas feels that he has escaped a repressed, backward-looking country and fallen headlong into an era of modernity and optimism. He is equally bewitched by the surreal, gigantic Atomium, which stands at the heart of this brave new world, and by Anneke, the lovely Flemish hostess who meets him off his plane. But Thomas's newfound sense of freedom proves illusory, as he finds himself being followed everywhere by two mysterious emissaries of the British Secret Service. Expo 58 may represent a glittering future, both for Europe and for Thomas himself, but he will soon be forced to decide where his public and private loyalties really lie.

Jonathan Coe's new novel stirs elements of Ealing comedy, Hitchcockian thriller and political farce into an incisive, affecting portrait of Britain as it stands at a postwar crossroads, faced with crucial choices between America and Europe, the future and the past.