William Boot, a young man who lives in genteel poverty, far from the iniquities of London, contributes nature notes to Lord Copper's Daily Beast, a national daily newspaper. He is dragooned into becoming a foreign correspondent, when the editors mistake him for John Courteney Boot, a fashionable novelist and a remote cousin. He is sent to Ishmaelia, a fictional state in East Africa, to report on the crisis there.

Lord Copper believes it "a very promising little war" and proposes "to give it fullest publicity". Despite his total ineptitude, Boot accidentally gets the journalistic "scoop" of the title. When he returns, the credit goes to the other Boot and William is left to return to his bucolic pursuits, much to his relief.

Some novels present timeless themes that resonate with readers many years after they are published. I found Scoop to be not one of those novels.

Based loosely on Waugh’s tour of Ethiopia when invaded by Italy before the outbreak of WW2, Scoop is a satire on mass media and its endless, oftentimes fact-free drive for fantastical headlines. About 80 years on, Scoop remains apt in its critique of the press and its abject churn for the extreme. But otherwise, it has aged as well as a Tintin comic. I found the humor it sought to present off balanced by continual racism on the part of some of the characters. ( )

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Scoop is one of the funniest and most carefree novels of Evelyn Waugh. Its appeal lies partly in our own strenuous relation with the media. Above all, the plot of the novel is based on the classic ploy of mistaken identity, sending the wrong man for the job. As a result of misfired nepotism， a newspaper, "The Daily Beast" sends one of its reporters to a war zone. What follows is just purely hilarious, truly a very funny story.

Evelyn Waugh at his best! ( )

A fake reporter reports on a fake war. Journalistic satire. Its lot shorter than you might expect, or at least feels so because not a lot happens and it felt a bit pointless. It certainly wasn't as funny as i expected and the main character doesn't really get involved in events to any significant degree. Its ok but nothing to write home about ;) . ( )