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Tom Rachman

Biography

Tom Rachman

​​​Tom Rachman is the author of five works of fiction: his bestselling debut, THE IMPERFECTIONISTS (2010), which was translated into 25 languages; the critically acclaimed follow-up, THE RISE & FALL OF GREAT POWERS (2014); a story collection, BASKET OF DEPLORABLES (2017); a novel set in the art world, THE ITALIAN TEACHER (2018); and a novel-in-stories, THE IMPOSTERS (2023).

Born in London and raised in Vancouver, Tom studied cinema at the University of Toronto and journalism at Columbia University in New York. He worked at The Associated Press as a foreign-news editor in Manhattan headquarters, then became a correspondent in Rome. He also reported from India, Sri Lanka, Japan, South Korea, Egypt, Turkey and elsewhere. To write fiction, he left the AP and moved to Paris, supporting himself as an editor at the International Herald Tribune. 

His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker, among other publications. He lives in London.

Tom Rachman

Books by Tom Rachman

The Imposters
by Tom Rachman - Fiction

Dora Frenhofer, a once successful but now aging and embittered novelist, knows her mind is going. But she is determined 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. Her 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 Italian Teacher
by Tom Rachman - Fiction

Conceived while his father, Bear, cavorted around Rome in the 1950s, Pinch learns quickly that Bear's genius trumps all. After Bear abandons his family, Pinch strives to make himself worthy of his father's attention --- first trying to be a painter himself; then resolving to write his father's biography; eventually settling, disillusioned, into a job as an Italian teacher in London. But when Bear dies, Pinch hatches a scheme to secure his father's legacy --- and make his own mark on the world.

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers
by Tom Rachman - Fiction

Tooly Zylberberg, the American owner of an isolated bookshop in the Welsh countryside, conducts a life full of reading, but with few human beings. Books are safer than people, who might ask awkward questions about her life. She prefers never to mention the strange events of her youth, which mystify and worry her still. Then startling news arrives from a long-lost boyfriend in New York, raising old mysteries and propelling her on a quest around the world in search of answers.

The Imperfectionists
by Tom Rachman - Fiction