The Imperfectionists

by Tom Rachman

The newspaper was founded in Rome in the 1950s, a product of passion and a multi-millionaire's fancy. Over fifty years, its eccentricities earned a place in readers' hearts around the globe. But now, circulation is down, the paper lacks a website, and the future looks bleak. Still, those involved in the publication seem to barely notice. The obituary writer is too busy avoiding work. The editor-in-chief is pondering sleeping with an old flame. The obsessive reader is intent on finishing every old edition, leaving her trapped in the past. And the publisher seems less interested in his struggling newspaper than in his magnificent basset hound, Schopenhauer. The Imperfectionists interweaves the stories of eleven unusual and endearing characters who depend on the paper. Funny and moving, the novel is about endings - the end of life, the end of sexual desire, the end of the era of newspapers - and about what might rise afterward.

(From Publisher).

Tom Rachman was born in London and raised in Vancouver. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Columbia School of Journalism. He has been a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press (stationed in Rome, with assignments taking him to Japan, South Korea, Turkey and Egypt, among other places). From 2006 to 2008, he worked as an editor at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. The Imperfectionists is his first novel and is being published in ten countries.

The flawed and engaging employees of a failing English-language newspaper in Rome, provide glimpses of human foible and folly in this superb debut.

Very enjoyable debut novel with a complex structure of interwoven stories, alternately hilarious and heart-wrenching.

The breadth of characters in this novel about a failing newspaper and how they drift in and out of each others lives, mirrors reality. Rachman also presents their many failings and weaknesses with every passing judgement.

A terrific and touching debut novel about the world of newspapers and those who create them.

A superlative debut that combines irresistible story telling with deft portraiture and beguiling bittersweet humor: masterful writing all round.