Tessa Szyszkowitz in conversation with Jonathan Coe and Giuliano da Empoli

IN PRAISE OF POLITICAL LITERATURE

When politics goes low, literature goes high: When, how and why do authors give their novels a political twist?

When Michelle Obama coined the phrase “When they go low, we go high” at the Democratic Party conference in 2016 she was talking about ethical leadership. Different from politicians, authors do not have an obligation to be either ethical nor leaders. Or do they?

Literature has been abused for political propaganda throughout history. Vergil’s “Aeneis” portrayed the emperor Augustus as heroic and his regime as a gift from God. In more modern times Jean Paul Sartre and Theodor Adorno had a public spat about Pros and Cons of political Literature: In his essay “What is literature?” Sartre advocated for engaged literature to further social change. In his essay “Commitment” Adorno called such literature as ineffective and even harmful.

Both Jonathan Coe and Giuliano da Empoli are known for their political literature. While Coe often uses humour and satire to mix social commentary into his bestsellers –  as in his Brexit-Satire Middle England – da Empoli comes from the other direction entirely. His first time novel and instant bestseller The Wizard of the Kremlin – Der Magier im Kreml – was a beautiful novel about a trade he knows all too well himself. He writes about Vladislaw Surkow, former influential chief advisor to the Russian president Vladimir Putin, after da Empoli served as a political former advisor to former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi.

Jonathan Coe, born 1961, is a British novelist. He would possibly rather be known as a musician –he still plays keyboards and composes music for two bands: The Peer Group and Italy’s Artchipel Orchestra. But since he became too successful as a novelist, people know him as an author. “What a Carve Up!”, “The Rotters club”, “Middle England” are only a few highlights in his oeuvre. He received many prizes among them The Costa Novel of the Year and the Prix du Livre Européen. His newest novel was  published this August in German: “Der Beweis meiner Unschuld”, Folio Verlag, 2025.

Giuliano  da Empoli, born 1973, is the Swiss Italian author of The Wizard of the Kremlin – Der Magier im Kreml, a first time novel and bestseller about Vladislaw Surkow, former influential chief advisor to the Russian president Vladimir Putin. He is a former political advisor himself, he served as the deputy mayor for cultural affairs in Florence to Matteo Renzi, and later as his political advisor during Renzi’s term as head of the Italian government (2014-2016) – an experience recounted in Le Florentin („The Florentine“) Giuliano da Empoli is a professor at Sciences Po university, the founder of the pro-European political thinktank  Volta in Milan and has just publishedhis new book  Die Stunde der Raubtiere (L’Heure des prédateurs, The Hour of the Predator,), a reflection on the current era of new autocrats allied with tech magnates. 

Tessa Szyszkowitz is an author and UK correspondent for the Austrian weekly Falter. Her latest book was “Echte Engländer – Britain and Brexit” (2018)