The Librarianist

AN INTERNATIONAL No. 1 BESTSELLER

Selected as a Washington Post Book of the Summer

'I absolutely adored it' NINA STIBBE

From bestselling and award-winning author Patrick deWitt comes a novel about an ordinary man who thought life’s surprises were behind him – until a chance encounter changed everything.

The Librarianist introduces Bob Comet, a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books in a mint-coloured house in Portland, Oregon. One morning, on his daily walk, he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior centre that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he’s known since retiring, Bob begins volunteering at the centre. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around him, and following a brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed.

Behind Bob Comet’s straight man facade is the story of an unhappy child’s runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian’s vocation, and the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses.