Set around WLT — “With Lettuce and Tomato” — a fictional Minneapolis radio station founded in the 1920s by two brothers trying to rescue their failing restaurant.

Keillor's Radio Romance follows the station and its orbit of announcers, performers, owners, eccentrics and listeners through radio’s rise and eventual displacement by television. The writing traces how local culture becomes broadcast culture: advertising begins reorganising commerce, voices acquire authority simply by travelling further, hometown life gets converted into entertainment, and an industry born from improvisation gradually becomes professionalised and commercial. It’s comic and deliberately old-fashioned in places, but underneath that is a fairly sharp novel about media, nostalgia and the weird and wonderful intimacy of hearing strangers speak inside your house.

Faber and Faber, London, 1992. First British edition, first printing. Hardcover with dust jacket. Light wear to dust-jacket edges and corners, with mild rubbing and handling marks. Scattered foxing to preliminaries and page edges, visible in places throughout. Binding firm. Very good condition.