The Imposters

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

“When a Tom Rachman novel lands in the bookstores, I stop living and breathing to devour it. It’s hard to think of anyone who has a better grasp on the world we live in (and I mean, like, the entire planet) and can write about it with such entertainment and panache.”—Gary Shteyngart

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.

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.