Jonathan Lee

Who is Jonathan Lee?

Jonathan Lee is a British writer best known as the author of the novels Who Is Mr Satoshi? and Joy.

On publication Who Is Mr Satoshi was reviewed by the British press. The Observer called it 'elegant and incisive', The Independent said it was a 'masterful first novel', the Daily Telegraph called it a 'funny, insightful and beautiful' and the Daily Mail described the novel as 'dream-like ... an unusual, playful and clever book. The novel was also praised by several well-known literary fiction writers, including Giles Foden, author of The Last King Of Scotland, who called it 'funny and moving'.

Who Is Mr Satoshi was a runner up in the Edinburgh Festival's First Book Award 2010, was shortlisted for a Medical Journalists' Association Open Book Award and led to Jonathan Lee being nominated for the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for literature 2011.

The author's agents, Aitken Alexander Associates Ltd, state on their website that Jonathan Lee was born in Surrey in 1981, graduated from the University of Bristol with a First in English Literature and was working as a solicitor when he wrote his debut novel.

Lee's second novel, Joy was released in hardback in June 2012. It has been widely reviewed, with the Observer declaring that it is 'exquisitely and surprisingly written ... it proves that Lee is a significant talent', the Literary Review saying it is 'an enormously impressive piece of storytelling' and Henry Sutton writing in The Mirror that ‘Lee’s the real deal – a British writer on the cusp of greatness ... A brilliant & powerful dissection of modern Britain’ . Booker Prize shortlisted author A.D. Miller said that ‘with its supple prose, ingenious structure, wit & slow-burn sympathy, Joy is a sly miracle of a novel’. However, some reviewers such as the reviewer on the Book Oxygen blog were far more critical, arguing that the book is unnecessarily 'complex and demanding' and can at times 'feel like a product'.