Editing Jonathan Coe (section)

==Career==
Coe has long been interested in both music and literature.  In the mid-1980s he played with a band (The Peer Group) and tried to get a recording of his music. He also wrote songs and played keyboards for a short-lived [[feminist]] cabaret group, Wanda and the Willy Warmers.<ref>{{cite news|last=Laity|first=Paul|title=Jonathan Coe: A Life in Writing|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/may/29/life-writing-jonathan-coe|work=[[The Guardian]]|date=29 May 2010}}</ref>

He published his first novel, ''The Accidental Woman'', in 1987. In 1994 his fourth novel ''[[What a Carve Up! (novel)|What a Carve Up!]]'' won the [[John Llewellyn Rhys Prize]], and the [[Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger]] in France. It was followed by ''The House of Sleep'', which won the [[Writers' Guild of Great Britain]] Best Novel award and, in France, the [[Prix Médicis]]. As of 2022, Coe has published fourteen novels.

Besides novels, Coe has written a biography of the experimental British novelist [[B. S. Johnson]], ''Like a Fiery Elephant'', which D. J. Taylor described in ''[[Literary Review]]'' as "a deeply unconventional biography," won the [[Samuel Johnson Prize]] in 2005.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://literaryreview.co.uk/hour-of-the-egoist|title=Hour of the Egoist|first=D. J.|last=Taylor|date=June 2004}}.</ref> Also in 2005 Penguin published his "collected shorter prose", a volume consisting of only 55 pages, under the title ''9th & 13th''. The same collection was published in France in 2012 under the title ''Désaccords imparfaits''.

He has written a short children's adaptation of ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' by [[Jonathan Swift]], and a children's story called ''The Broken Mirror''. Both titles are published in Italy only, as ''La storia di Gulliver'' (2011) and ''Lo specchio dei desideri'' (2012).

A handwritten manuscript page from ''[[The Rotters' Club (novel)|The Rotters' Club]]'' was displayed as part of the "Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands" exhibition that ran at the [[British Library]] during 2012.

Coe was a judge for the [[Booker Prize]] in 1996 and has been a jury member at the [[Venice Film Festival]] (in 1999, under the chairmanship of [[Emir Kusturica]]) and the [[Edinburgh Film Festival]] in 2007.

In 2012 Coe was invited by [[Javier Marías]] to become a duke of the kingdom of [[Redonda]]. He chose as his title "Duke of Prunes", after a favourite piece of music by [[Frank Zappa]].

Coe read an excerpt of ''[[The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim]]'' to crowds at the [[Latitude Festival]] in July 2009. The central character was to be "a product of the social media boom", and "the sort of person with hundreds of Facebook friends but no one to talk to when his marriage breaks up."<ref>[https://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-07/28/jonathan-coe-on-how-to-build-a-bettter-e-book.aspx? Katie Scott, "Jonathan Coe on how to build a better e-book"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090730040351/http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-07/28/jonathan-coe-on-how-to-build-a-bettter-e-book.aspx |date=30 July 2009 }}, Wired Blog, 28 July 2009.</ref>

Coe's 2019 book ''[[Middle England (novel)|Middle England]]'' won the [[European Book Prize]]<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20191209-talking-europe-jonathan-coe-european-book-prize-2019-winner-brexit-uk|title=British author Jonathan Coe, European Book Prize 2019 winner|website=France24|date=9 December 2019|access-date=28 November 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.euronews.com/2019/12/10/jonathan-coe-brexit-might-begin-a-conversation-britain-needs-to-have-with-itself|title=UK election: 'Getting Brexit done is going to take decades' says Jonathan Coe|first=Jez|last= Fielder|author2=Alasdair Sandford|author3=Isabel Silva|website=Euronews|date=23 December 2019|access-date=28 November 2021}}</ref> and also won the [[Costa Book Award]] in the Novel category.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/06/jonathan-coe-wins-costa-fiction-prize-for-perfect-brexit-novel|title=Jonathan Coe wins Costa prize for 'perfect' Brexit novel|newspaper=The Guardian|first=Alison|last=Flood|date=6 January 2020}}</ref>