Karoo
By (Author) Steve Tesich
Vintage Publishing
Vintage
5th February 1999
7th January 1999
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
813.54
Paperback
464
Width 130mm, Height 198mm, Spine 30mm
321g
A wickedly funny novel about an American anti-hero. Oscar-winning writer Steve Tesich masterfully creates and destroys the sad, mad world of Saul Karoo. Karoo is an alcoholic who can't get drunk, a loving father who can't bear to be alone with his son, a fixer of film scripts who admits that he ruins every one of them. Calamity and comedy accompany Saul on his odyssey through sex, death and showbusiness as he seeks to 'fix' both a master director's greatest film and his own broken life at the same time.
Karoo has all the ingredients of a truly great novel. Its plot has the pathos of a Greek tragedy and enough twists and turns to satisfy the most avid Raymond Chandler fan. The characters come alive as soon as they appear on the page. Fantastic * Literary Review *
Utterly wonderful... This novel does supremely what novels were invented to do - it confronts the most unbearable sadness with a comic exhilaration that makes you almost pleased that life is tragic -- Howard Jacobson
Mordantly funny, unexpectedly moving and brutally honest about the business of making movies -- Richard E Grant
Fascinating. A real satiric invention, loaded with wise outrage -- Arthur Miller
Terrific. Nakedly honest, a tour de force of self-destruction. As Saul spirals into free-fall we're with him all the way, because he's so furiously funny -- Deborah Moggach
Steve Tesich wrote many plays and screenplays, including the Academy Award-winning Breaking Away and The World According to Garp. His first novel, Summer Crossing, was published in 1982. He died in 1996 at the age of fifty-three.