Firmin (UK Signed Limited Edition, Slipcased)

Savage, Sam

ISBN 10: 0297854585 / ISBN 13: 9780297854586

Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2008

About this Item

First Printing. The Book is very fine, square, tight and unread. It is unmarked, with clean pages free of inscriptions or marks and has been signed by the author directly on to the limitation page. The limitation page states that it is one of 250 numbered copies, but this copy is un-numbered. The book was published in decorative boards without a dust jacket and is presented in a decorative slipcase in very fine condition. First Edition, First Printing - Signed by the Author. All our books are covered with a clear, removable, chemically inert, protective wrapper before being securely bubble wrapped and dispatched in strong corrugated cardboard boxes. Seller Inventory # 15863

Bibliographic Details

Title: Firmin (UK Signed Limited Edition, Slipcased)

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London

Publication Date: 2008

Binding: Hardback

Condition: Very Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

Signed: Signed by Author

Edition: First Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Firmin is the runt of a litter of rats born in the basement of Pembroke Books, a ramshackle old bookstore run by the equally shambolic owner Norman Shine. Forced to compete for food, Firmin ends up chewing on the books that surround him. Thanks to his unusual diet, he acquires the miraculous ability to read. He subsequently develops an insatiable hunger for literature and a very unratlike sense of the world and his place in it. He is a debonair soul trapped in a rat's body¿

But a literary rat is a lonely rat and, spurned by his own kind, he thinks he recognises a kindred soul in Norman. Firmin seeks solace in the Lovelies of the local burlesque cinema and in his own imagination. But the days of the bookshop and of the close community around it are numbered. The area has been marked out for urban regeneration and soon the faded glory of the bookshop, the low-life bars, loan agencies and pawn shops will face the bulldozers.

Brilliantly original and richly allegorical, Firmin is brimming with charm and wistful longing for a world that treasures its seedy theatres, one-of-a-kind characters, and cluttered bookshops.

Review:

It has that rare quality of by the end seeming like an archetype for a story that's been around all along (JOHN SELF ASYLUM)

a thought-provoking meditation on the nature of human existence (James Pressley Bloomberg.com)

I enjoyed Sam Savage's book more than any work of light fiction I've read in 2008 (John Sutherland THE TIMES)

Sam Savage has written a great comic allegory, and you can bet movie men are already looking at it with Pixar vision (SAGA)

I think both men and women would enjoy this book and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who loves rats or books (THE BOOKBAG)

As Firmin discovers when he hops across oceans and abridges centuries, reading multiplies life (Peter Conrad THE OBSERVER)

Firmin is an unusual picaresque hero for whom learning.. is an adventure of new discoveries.. it is often funny (Ruth Morse TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT)