Interview

An interview with Tom Rachman about his first novel, The Imperfectionists, set in the offices of an English-language newspaper in Rome.

Karen Rigby interviews Tom Rachman

BB: How has studying cinema informed your writing?

TR: At college, I majored in film studies, so movies certainly affected how I tell stories. One strength of cinema is its speed: a movie must grip you and tell a story fast; it ought to pull you completely into the onscreen world. Movies have limits, though, struggling to move beyond what can be seen and what can be heard. The written story allows you to venture more deeply inside characters - a novel explores those aspects of people that, in day-to-day life, we cannot easily see or hear. This is what I hoped to do in The Imperfectionists, to bare the thoughts of a range of people who weren't necessarily shrieking but who were worth hearing. If my book also contains something of the pacing and directness of a good film, then I would be very happy.

BB: In many of the stories, relationships decline after pivotal events or quieter, emotional realizations. Rather than romanticizing the expat experience, they explore loneliness, infidelities, and death, among other struggles...

TR: Life overseas (the novel is set in Rome) can be thrilling and disheartening, liberating and constricting. You have the freedom to invent yourself...