Karoo is a posthumously-published cult novel by screenwriter and playwright Steve Tesich. Joining John and Andy to analyse this dark and hilarious tale of a Hollywood script doctor's apocalyptic decline and fall are journalist and podcaster Sali Hughes and novelist John Niven (who previously guested on Backlisted episode 9 discussing Martin Amis's The Information).

Sali Hughes is a journalist, presenter and broadcaster, specialising in beauty, women’s issues and film. She has written for more or less every quality magazine and newspaper from Vogue and the Daily Telegraph to Cosmopolitan and Empire and has been Beauty Editor on the Guardian since 2011. She has published three bestselling books, the latest of which, Our Rainbow Queen, published by Square Peg in 2019, was a colourful and witty journey through eight decades of royal style and her new book Everything is Washable & Other Life Lessons is published in September by Fourth Estate. Sali is also a podcaster- The Beauty Podcast With Sali Hughes debuted at number one across all categories.

John Niven was born in Irvine, Ayrshire and worked in the music industry for a decade before leaving to write fiction.  His bestselling debut novel Kill Your Friends was published in 2008 and later made into a feature film, scripted by Niven and starring Nicholas Hoult and James Corden. He has gone on to publish ten novels including The Second Coming, Straight White Male and his most recent, The F**k It List. He continues to work as a screenwriter and his latest film The Trip starring Noomi Rapace and Aksel Hennie arrives on Netflix this autumn.

Also in this episode, John enjoys This Sporting Life: Sport and Liberty in England, 1760-1960 by Robert Colls, a social history of the English and their relationship to sport, while Andy recommends Unquiet Landscape, Christopher Neve's recently-republished study of the English imagination in 20th-century landscape painting.

As far as possible, all the books listed below are supplied via the Backlisted shop on bookshop.org and a proportion of the price helps support the podcast.

Books mentioned:

Steve Tesich - Karoo; Summer Crossing
Sali Hughes - Our Rainbow Queen; Pretty Honest; Pretty Iconic; Everything is Washable & Other Life Lessons
John Niven - Kill Your Friends; Straight White Male; The Second Coming; The F**k It List
Robert Colls - This Sporting Life: Sport and Liberty in England, 1760-1960; George Orwell: English Rebel
Christopher Neve - Unquiet Landscape
Joseph Heller - Something Happened
John Updike - Rabbit, Run
Saul Bellow - Herzog
John Irving - The World According to Garp
Michael Tolkin - The Player
Elmore Leonard - Get Shorty
Brett Easton Ellis - American Psycho
Nora Ephron - Heartburn
Richard Ford - The Sportswriter

Other links:

Film director Jean-Pierre Berckmans discusses Karoo, 2013
Steve Tesich's acceptance speech for Best Original Screenplay at the 1980 Oscars
Steve Tesich on Letterman, 1982
Breaking Away (1979, screenplay by Steve Tesich)
The World According to Garp (1982, screenplay by Steve Tesich)