The diaries that are the source of David Sedaris' remarkable and bestselling autobiographical stories.
'He's like an American Alan Bennett' Guardian

'There isn't a dull word among these pages' India Knight, Sunday Times

'So often Sedaris's phrasing is beautiful in its piquancy and minimalism...His life is extraordinary in so many ways - the eccentric family, the crazy jobs, the fame, the globetrotting - but one of the more unlikely achievements here is in making it all seem quite ordinary. Ultimately, his masterstroke is in acting as a bystander in his own story' Book of the Day, Guardian

'It's like gossiping with an old friend - if that friend were a rather sexy American Alan Bennett with lots of good drug stories' Melissa Katsoulis, The Times

'Cool, very funnv, sardonic, yet open . . . there is an echo of Truman Capote or Tennessee Williams - with extra quirk. Or even Lewis Carroll . . . one of the biggest comedy writers of his generation' Peter Bradshaw, Spectator

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

'He's like an American Alan Bennett, in that his own fastidiousness becomes the joke, as per the taxi encounter, or his diary entry about waiting interminably in a coffee-bar queue' Guardian review of An Evening with David Sedaris

The point is to find out who you are and to be true to that person. Because so often you can't. Won't people turn away if they know the real me? you wonder. The me that hates my own child, that put my perfectly healthy dog to sleep? The me who thinks, deep down, that maybe The Wire was overrated?

For nearly four decades, David Sedaris has faithfully kept a diary in which he records his thoughts and observations on the odd and funny events he witnesses. Anyone who has attended a live Sedaris event knows that his diary readings are often among the most joyful parts of the evening. In Theft by Finding, Sedaris brings us his favourite entries. From the family home in Raleigh, North Carolina, we follow Sedaris as he sets out to make his way in the world. As an art student and then teacher in Chicago he works at a succession of very odd jobs, meeting even odder people, before moving to New York to pursue a career as a writer - where instead he very quickly lands a job in Macy's department store as an elf in Santaland . . .

Tender, hilarious, illuminating, and endlessly captivating, Theft by Finding offers a rare look into the mind of one of our generation's greatest comic geniuses.