The Imperfectionists

The charming and enthralling story of an idiosyncratic English-language newspaper in Rome and the lives of its staffers as the paper fights for survival in the internet age.

‘A precise, playful fiction with a deep but lightly worn intelligence’ – Times Literary Supplement

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.