Kill Your Friends is the debut novel by the Scottish writer John Niven. It was published in 2008 by William Heinemann. The novel is set in 1997 at the height of the Britpop music scene. The protagonist, Steven Stelfox, is unhappy about his current position as an A&R agent in the record company he works for in London. Stelfox, uninterested in most music, is jealous of his coworkers' success in finding successful musical acts and attempts to climb the career ladder amidst competition. The protagonist and plot have been compared to American Psycho and been described as "mad, gleeful nastiness". The work is considered satirical, and is described as an "all-out assault" by The Independent, and as having "the horrible, slightly metallic tang of total authenticity" by the Philadelphia Weekly.
Adaptations (1)
Kill Your Friends was adapted into a 2015 film.
Kill Your Friends2015 · film · 103 min · dir. Owen Harris · IMDb ↗A&R man Steven Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through the music business, a world where 'no one knows anything' and where careers are made and broken by chance and the fickle tastes of the general public. Fuelled by greed, ambition and inhuman quantities of drugs, Stelfox lives the dream, as he searches for his next hit record.
