A Factotum in the Book Trade

A memoir of life in the antiquarian book trade, in London, England, and, in keeping with Kociejowski’s travel writing, a journey through people’s lives. Beginning with his childhood in rural Ontario, where at the annual village jumble sale he would buy books not so much for their content as for their tactile qualities, and from there to Ottawa, where he first learned books can have a value, and from there to England, where he fell into the book trade almost by accident, A Factotum in the Book Trade is an elegy for a floating world on the cusp of disappearance