The Imperfectionists

Tom Rachman

'Spectacular' New York Times
'Sublime writing' The Times
Funny, poignant, occasionally breathtaking' Financial Times

The newspaper was founded in Rome in the 1950s, a product of passion and a multi-millionaire's fancy. Eccentric and beloved, it now faces demise in the new digital era.

Still, the staff barely notice. 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 is less interested in his struggling newspaper than in his magnificent basset hound, Schopenhauer.

The Imperfectionists interweaves the stories of eleven unusual and endearing characters in a novel about endings - the end of life, the end of sexual desire, the end of the era of newspapers - and about what might rise afterwards.