Basket of Deplorables

'This book is hilariously funny and blackly despairing, often at the same time.' Age

Almost true stories for a post-truth world

A Manhattan party on election night. Liberal media types gather with big grins and high-end canapés to watch the Trump-Clinton results come in, expecting a smooth victory for Hillary. As the outcome shifts and they descend into panic, the host stands abruptly before her guests, confessing a shocking crime of years before.

What follows is a series of witty, cutting, addictive tales of Trump times, portraying Democrats and Republicans in a divided America, from powerful to powerless, angry to thwarted, from a Starbucks barista who dreams of making it onstage, to a couple whose online date goes bitterly awry, to a charmingly wicked US businessman living undercover in rural Italy.

Basket of Deplorables is a timely take on the craziness of today: almost-true fiction for a post-truth world.

Tom Rachman is the author of two novels, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (2014) and The Imperfectionists (2010), an international bestseller that has been translated into 25 languages. Rachman, who was born in London in 1974 and raised in Vancouver, joined the Associated Press in New York and has worked as an AP correspondent in Rome and for the International Herald Tribune in Paris. His writing has appeared widely including in the New York Times and the New Statesman. He lives in London.

'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.' Garry Shteyngart on The Rise and Fall of Great Powers

'This acutely funny novel shows the great powers in our lives are often those closest to home.' North & South Magazine on The Rise and Fall of Great Powers

'I'm still reeling from this powerful and provocative novel...[it] offers a gruelling assessment of humanity, mercifully tempered by some angels in disguise.' Herald-Sun on 'The Rise and Fall of Great Powers