See It, Say It, Sorted: Jonathan Coe’s Genre-Bending Novel
About this episode
Jonathan Coe discusses his genre-bending novel and the interplay of fiction and reality in contemporary society.
In this episode, Adam Biles welcomes Jonathan Coe to Shakespeare and Company in Paris for a rich, funny, and wide-ranging conversation about Coe’s genre-bending novel The Proof of My Innocence . What begins as a playful pastiche of a cozy crime mystery evolves into three interlocking novellas—a whodunnit, a piece of dark academia, and a fragment of autofiction—that push at the limits of storytelling itself. Coe discusses why crime fiction offers comfort in anxious times, how the destabilising politics of late 2022 (from Liz Truss to the Queen’s death) seeped into the book, and why he’s increasingly drawn to overtly fictional narratives in an age suspicious of facts. He reflects on class, Cambridge, generational politics, and the powerful role fiction plays in preserving memory. Filled with humour and insight, the conversation offers both a defence of storytelling and a portrait of Britain in flux. Buy The Proof of My Innocence: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-proof-of-my-innocence-3 Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He is the award-winning, bestselling author of fifteen novels, including What a Carve Up!, The Rotters’ Club, Middle England and, most…
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