US Office star to read from his book debut

The US Office star BJ Novak is to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The stand-up and actor will appear between August 19 and 24 in a 250-seat venue at Assembly George Square in a show called One More Thing, based on his debut short story collection of the same name.

'Inspired by the public performances of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain', Novak will deliver 'dramatic readings' of some of the 64 stories, interspersed with anecdotes.

Best known as Ryan, the smug temp worker in the US version of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's sitcom, and as one of the Jewish commandos in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, Novak wrote on and directed several episodes of The Office for NBC, which airs on Comedy Central in the UK, as well as his co-star and sometime girlfriend Mindy Kaling's TV vehicle The Mindy Project.

The Harvard graduate, who is currently appearing in The Amazing Spiderman 2 as villainous 'spider-slayer' Alistair Smythe, was paid a reported seven figure sum for a two-book deal with Knopf, after prospective publishers were invited to see him reading from the collection at a New York comedy club.

His literary agent, Richard Abate, told the Wall Street Journal in January that 'what we were selling in a way was more than just the collection, we were selling someone with the potential to be a David Sedaris, someone who could travel and perform his pieces'.

According to the WSJ, Novak is also planning an audiobook version to feature Emma Thompson, Julianne Moore, Carey Mulligan, Lena Dunham, Jason Schwartzman and pop star Katy Perry, plus his former Office co-stars Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer and Kaling.

A number of extracts have been published in magazines, including The Man Who Invented The Calendar in The New Yorker and The Something By John Grisham in the WSJ.

Here's a trailer for the book, co-starring Kaling:

- By Jay Richardson

Published: 7 May 2014