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