Running the Light

'The best novel I've ever read about comedy' Megan Nolan

By: Sam Tallent

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Paperback | 14 May 2026 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Format
Paperback

Dimensions(cm)
13.0 x 19.9 x 2.7

Paperback

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'THE BEST NOVEL I'VE EVER READ ABOUT COMEDY' Megan Nolan

'GLORIOUSLY DEPRAVED' Geoff Dyer
'LIT UP MY PLEASURE CENTRES AND LEFT ME STUNNED' Rob Doyle

'Billy Ray Schafer stepped off the plane in Amarillo, Texas, with twenty-six hundred dollars tucked down the leg of his black ostrich-skin cowboy boot. He walked to baggage claim slowly, jelly-legged and nearing lucidity, coming out from under the Xanax he snorted before the flight...'

Debauched, divorced and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days, he travels from hell gig to hell gig across the American Southwest in search of a reason to keep living. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray is the answer to a tragic question: What happens when opportunity never arrives? Or - worse - when it comes and goes?

'Exceptional . . . Running the Light is Dante as gag artist, trapped in a Diabolical Comedy. Or maybe, in the end, a disgraced Odysseus searching for a way back home to contrition and forgiveness. Read it and weep'

IRISH TIMES

'Nothing I've read hits the psycho-chemical abyss of road life turned horribly wrong quite like this' LIAS SAOUDI

Industry Reviews

Thrilling, nauseating and painfully real . . . the best novel I've ever read about comedy - Megan Nolan

A feat of greatness that lit up my pleasure centres and left me stunned - Rob Doyle

Anyone wondering where The Great American Novel went: this is it on bail - DBC Pierre

The obvious point of comparison is Martin Amis's Money, but relative to Tallent's gloriously depraved protagonist, John Self is strolling to a chai latte after his Pilates class - Geoff Dyer

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