Coronation Chicken

by Nigel Barley

Overview

It is 1953 in southern England, the time of the Coronation, and Jack is a small boy from the poor end of the village who is trying desperately to understand the strange people he has been born into. After the gritty, state-regulated austerity of the war, it is supposed to be a time for the celebration of cherished values and national renewal and the idea is to share the ultimate luxury food - a chicken - at a street party as a symbol of all that is eternal in the British identity. But things do not go as planned and begin to fall apart in the face of death, sex and changing reality.

Coronation Chicken is a darkly comic novella that mixes personal recollection, anthropological insight and humour to give a portrait of a post-war Britain that has now vanished for ever. It is at once nostalgic and more than a little unnerving.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940149462520
Publisher:	eBookIt.com
Publication date:	04/27/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	390 KB

About the Author

Nigel Barley is the author of some twenty books with Penguin, Time Warner, Monsoon, Eland and Little,Brown. He originally trained as an anthropologist and worked in West Africa, spending time with the Dowayo people of North Cameroon. He survived to move to the Ethnography Department of the British Museum, settled on Indonesia as his principal research interest and has worked on both the history and contemporary culture of that area. After escaping from the museum, he is now a writer and broadcaster and divides his time, with his partner, between London and Indonesia.