Jonathan Coe in conversation with Tessa Szyszkowitz: "MR. WILDER ANDE ME"

“MR. WILDER AND ME”
Book presentation of Jonathan Coe’s new novel – a portrait of the
Austrian-American film legend Billy Wilder.


Jonathan Coe is known for his satirical and deeply political
novels. The British author wrote The Rotter’s Clubabout the
70ties that prepared the political ground for Thatcherism; What a
Carve Up! about the Thatcher years; The closed Circle in the
run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. His most recent book was
Middle-England, which The Guardian called „a bittersweet Brexit
novel“. Jonathan Coe presented the German edition at Kreiskyforum
on March 9th 2020 – the last event before the first Covid
lockdown.


In his new novel Mr. Wilder and me Coe creates a fascinating
portrait of the Hollywood legend, who spent his forming years in
Vienna before the Second World War. Coe shows Wilder, the master
of comedy and creator of Some like it hot in his own bittersweet
comedy at the end of his career. While Billy Wilder shoots one of
his last films Fedora in Europe, he re-connects with his memories
of pre-war Europe and senses the onset of a new era.


At Kreiskyforum Jonathan Coe will talk about his new book with
Tessa Szyszkowitz and discuss how the generation of film-makers
of Wilder’s era used comedy in film as an escape from the
traumatic experiences of World War Two.


This event will be in English. The reading from Mr. Wilder and me
will be both in English and German.


German Edition: Jonathan Coe, Mr. Wilder und ich. Aus dem
Englischen von Cathrine Hornung. Folio Verlag 2021. More
information:
https://folioverlag.com/Mr.-Wilder-und-ich/9783852568331


Jonathan Coe, Author and Novelist, was educated
at Trinity College, Cambridge, and completed a Ph.D. on Henry
Fielding's Tom Jones at Warwick University. His work has received
many prizes and awards, including both Costa Novel of the Year
and Prix du Livre Européen for Middle England. In France he won
the Prix Médicis for The House of Sleep and has been appointed
Officier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres. In Italy he has also
won the Premio Flaiano (for Number 11) and the Premio Bauer-Ca’
Foscari.


Tessa Szyszkowitz, Author and Journalist for
Profil, Falter and Cicero. She is also Senior Associate Fellow at
the Royal United Services Institute in London.





Recorded at Bruno Kreisky Forum on September 14,
2021