The best-selling novel had been described as unfilmable. Tesich returned to the sport of cycling with the screenplay for "American Flyers" (1985). The main characters were two brothers, played by Kevin Costner and David Marshall Grant, who enter a long-distance bicycle race in the Colorado Rockies. His novel "Karoo" was published posthumously in 1998. Arthur Miller described the novel: "Fascinating—a real satiric invention full of wise outrage." The novel was a "New York Times" Notable Book for 1998. The novel also appeared in a German translation as "Abspann", and it was also translated in France in 2012 where it was acclaimed by the critics and became a best-seller. Oxford Dictionaries credits Tesich with the first use of the term "post-truth," which Oxford defined as "circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief." Ralph Keyes, author of "The Post-Truth Era" (2004), also says he first saw the term "in a 1992 Nation essay by the late Steve Tesich." Post-truth was Oxford's 2016 Word of the Year. Tesich died in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada on July 1, 1996, following a heart attack. He was 53 years old. In 1973, Tesich won the Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Playwright for the play "Baba Goya", which is also known under the title "Nourish the Beast". Tesich won the following awards for the "Breaking Away" screenplay in 1979, whose original working title was "Bambino":   He also received a nomination in 1980 for a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay-Motion Picture. In 2005, the Ministry of Religion and Diaspora established the annual "Stojan—Steve Tešić Award", to be awarded to the writers of Serbian origin that write in other languages.