For younger readers, stories about newspapers in their heyday may have a whiff of industrial archaeology, akin to tales about whaling or steam trains. Tom Rachman's first novel is set in Rome, on a once-mighty American-owned international newspaper, surely quite unlike the (Paris-based) International Herald Tribune, where he used to work. The book links together 11 characters, each sharply drawn in a separate chapter. Read singly, each would be a good short story. Together they make an excellent novel.
展开▼
