Jonathan Coe
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Jonathan_Coe".

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2007)

Jonathan Coe
At Humber Mouth Festival on 19 June 2006
Born	19th August 1961 Birmingham, UK
Occupation	novelist
Nationality	British
Writing period	1987-present
Genres	satire

Jonathan Coe, born 19 August 1961 in Birmingham, is a British novelist and writer. His work usually has an underlying preoccupation with political issues, although this is often expressed seriously in the form of satire. For example, What a Carve Up! reworked the plot of an old 1960s spoof horror film of the same name, in the light of the 'carve up' of the UK's resources which some felt was carried out by Margaret Thatcher's right wing Conservative governments of the 1980s. He studied at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Trinity College, Cambridge, before teaching at the University of Warwick. In July 2006 Coe was given an honorary degree by The University of Birmingham.

Both What a Carve Up! and The Rotters' Club have been adapted as drama serials for BBC Radio 4; The Rotters' Club (which was set in a very lightly fictionalised version of his old school in the 1970s King Edward's School, Birmingham) was also adapted for television and broadcast on BBC Two. The Dwarves of Death was filmed as Five Seconds to Spare.

In a recent article ^[1], British journalist John Pilger mentions sending a copy of What a Carve Up! to the imprisoned Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Musical Collaborations

Music is a constant thread in Coe's oeuvre, and he tried to find a record label as a performer before he became a published novelist. He had to wait until 2001 to make his first appearance on a record with 9th & 13th (Tricatel, 2001), a collection of readings of his own writings set to music by jazz pianist/double bass player Danny Manners and indiepop 'cult' artist Louis Philippe.

In particular, Coe is a lifelong fan of Canterbury progressive rock. His novel The Rotters' Club is name after an album by Hatfield and the North. He's contributed to the liner notes for that band's archival release Hatwise Choice.^[2] He recently said: "I'd love to find a pianist to collaborate with - maybe Alex Maguire, who is now playing with the reformed line-up of Hatfield and the North". Coe has also collaborated with flautist Theo Travis.

Novels

• The Accidental Woman Duckworth, 1987
• A Touch of Love Duckworth, 1989
• The Dwarves of Death Fourth Estate, 1990
• What a Carve Up! or The Winshaw Legacy Viking, 1994 (winner of the 1994 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize)
• The House of Sleep Viking, 1997 (winner of the Prix Médicis)
• The Rotters' Club Viking, 2001 (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize).
• The Closed Circle Viking, 2004
• The Rain Before It Falls Viking, 2007

Non-fiction

• Humphrey Bogart: Take It and Like It Bloomsbury, 1991, a biography of Humphrey Bogart
• James Stewart: Leading Man Bloomsbury, 1994, a James Stewart biography
• Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B. S. Johnson Picador, 2004 (winner of the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction)

References

1. ^ "My last conversation with Aung San Suu Kyi" by John Pilger, 3 Oct 2007, [1]
2. ^ Hatfield and the North website

External links

• Closing the Circle: Jonathan Coe In Interview
• Online discussion about Jonathan Coe and B.S. Johnson
• "Letter from England: A Blairite Novel" Review of Coe's The Closed Circle in n+1 magazine.
• Jonathan Coe at www.contemporarywriters.com
• A one-hour interview about his writing (France-Culture, Bibliothèque étrangère, Francesca Isidori)
• Jonathan Coe on Writing
• Audio Podcast on BBC4's Bookclub
• Jonathan Coe reading from "The Rain Before It Fall" at writLOUD