Top 10 journalist's tales

Tom Rachman was born in 1974 in London, but grew up in Vancouver. He studied cinema at the University of Toronto and completed a Master's degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York. From 1998, he worked as an editor at the foreign desk of The Associated Press in New York, then did a stint as a reporter in India and Sri Lanka, before returning to New York. In 2002, he was sent to Rome as an AP correspondent, with assignments taking him to Japan, South Korea, Turkey and Egypt. Beginning in 2006, he worked part-time as an editor at the International Herald Tribune in Paris to support himself while writing fiction. His debut novel is The Imperfectionists.

One of Rachman's top ten journalist's tales, as told to the Guardian:

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Published in 1938, this satirical masterpiece recounts the misfortunes of a timid young writer of articles about the English countryside who, by mistake, is dispatched to cover civil war in Africa. Disaster follows, as do the most memorable scenes in the genre, enough to console generations of bumbling foreign correspondents.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue