Beginning eight years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories are replaced by Poundland, and London, where frenzied riots give way to Olympic fever, MIDDLE ENGLAND follows a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through a time of immense change. And within all these lives is the story of modern England: a story of nostalgia and delusion; of bewilderment and barely-suppressed rage. The novel for our strange new times.