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Synopses & Reviews
From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Imperfectionists, the story of a chameleonic writer, and the indelible characters in her orbit, in a novel about love, the power of art, and what we leave behind.
Dora Frenhofer, a once successful but now aging and embittered novelist, knows her mind is going. She is determined, however, to finish her final book, and reverse her fortunes, before time runs out. Alone in her London home during the pandemic, she creates, and is in turn created by, the fascinating real characters from her own life.
Like a twenty-first-century Scheherazade, Dora spins stories to ward off her end. From New Delhi to New York, Copenhagen to Los Angeles, Australia to Syria to Paris, Dora’s chapters trot the globe, inhabiting the perspectives of her missing brother, her estranged daughter, her erstwhile lover, and her last remaining friend, among others in her orbit. As her own life comes into ever sharper focus, so do the signal events that have made her who she is, leaving us in Dora’s thrall until, with an unforeseen twist, she snaps the final piece of the puzzle into place.
The Imposters is Tom Rachman at his inimitable best. With his trademark style — at once “deliciously ironic and deeply affectionate” (The Washington Post) — he has delivered a novel whose formal ingenuity and flamboyant technique are matched only by its humanity and generosity.
Review
"Tom Rachman’s bustling, globe-trotting new novel manages to be about a writer’s life ending, quietly, lonesomely — even as it bursts with characters, plots, humor and drama... Rachman, a former A.P. foreign-news editor, has a far-and-wide imagination, and his novel is ingenious: investing a protagonist at the twilight of her life with grand, restless vision." Vogue
Review
"A grand tapestry of humanity... From the author of The Imperfectionists and The Italian Teacher comes the story of an octogenarian novelist desperate to finish her final book before it’s too late — and gets the chance to do just that during an isolated Covid lockdown" Eliza Smith, Lit Hub
Review
"Clever and full of tricks from start to finish... The Imposters is Tom Rachman’s fifth book in just over a decade. It is also his best — full of twists and surprises... Whether it’s 1970s India, modern-day LA or Syria, Rachman has a good ear for place and time, and changes gear effortlessly. Each chapter is a short story in its own right, but when key characters turn up again elsewhere, the connection invariably is with Dora, until you start to wonder whether they might be the creations of this novelist, whose memory is perhaps not as bad as we thought." The Spectator UK
About the Author
Tom Rachman is the author of three novels: The Italian Teacher, The Rise & Fall of Great Powers, and the New York Times bestseller The Imperfectionists. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Born in London and raised in Vancouver, Rachman worked at the Associated Press as a foreign-news editor in Manhattan and Rome before becoming a novelist. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He lives with his family in London.