Books by william boyd

Morgan Leafy isn't overburdened with worldly success - he is refreshingly free from it. But then, as a representative of Her Britannic Majesty in tropical Kinjanja, it was not very constructive of him to get involved in wholesale bribery with sensitive local politicians.topEditorial Reviews - Amazon

Morgan Leafy isn't overburdened with worldly success - he is refreshingly free from... ...Read More »

Delivered In The Divinity School, Cambridge, In April And May, 1894. ...Read More »

It is 1939. Eva Delectorskaya is a beautiful 28-year-old Russian emigree living in Paris. As war breaks out, she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious Englishman, and under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy, to mask her emotions and trust no one, including those she loves most. Since the war, Eva has carefully rebuilt her life as a typically Engli... ...Read More »

This new collection of eleven stories by the author of The Blue Afternoon takes readers back in time from a contemporary Hollywood film shoot to World War I in Vienna, introducing an unforgettable cast of characters. Artful, witty, moving, The Destiny of Nathalie X is a confirmation of Boyd's standing as a master storyteller.,The author of The Blue Afternoon and Brazzaville Beach confirms his ma... ...Read More »

William Boyd's first collection of non-fiction is a substantial volume of writings from the last three decades that range widely over his particular interests and obsessions. Bamboo gathers together Boyd's writing on literature, art, the movie business, television, people he has met, places he has visited and autobiographical reflections on his African childhood, his years at boarding school and t... ...Read More »

This is William Boyd's third volume of short stories following his acclaimed collections On the Yankee Station (1981) and The Destiny of Nathalie X (1995). Described as the finest storyteller of his generation , Boyd shows his mastery of the form as these stories range widely through time and space. In a brilliant array of styles and narratives we move from 1930s Germany to Los Angeles in the Seco... ...Read More »

"Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary". So says Logan Mountstuart, the hero of William Boyd's eighth novel. ANY HUMAN HEART tells the story of Mountstuart's long and rackety life, one which spans the twentieth century, in all its fantastic and humdrum, dangerous and tranquil, tragic and humourous aspects. ANY HUMAN HEART is an ambitious, all-encompassing novel. Through the intimate journa... ...Read More »

Logan Gonzago Mountstuart, writer, was born in 1906, and died of a heart attack on October 5, 1991, aged 85. Any Human Heart is his disjointed autobiography, a massive tome chronicling "my personal rollercoaster"--or rather, "not so much a rollercoaster", but a yo-yo, "a jerking spinning toy in the hands of a maladroit child". From his early childhood in Montevideo, son of an English corned beef e... ...Read More »

This is William Boyd's third volume of short stories following his acclaimed collections On the Yankee Station (1981) and The Destiny of Nathalie X (1995). Described as the finest storyteller of his generation , Boyd shows his mastery of the form as these stories range widely through time and space. In a brilliant array of styles and narratives we move from 1930s Germany to Los Angeles in the Sec... ...Read More »

"Any Human Heart" is an ambitious, all-encompassing novel. Through the intimate journals of Logan Mounstuart we travel from Uruguay to Oxford, on to Paris, the Bahamas, New York and West Africa, and meet his three wives, his family, his friends and colleagues, his rivals, enemies and lovers, including notables such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf.Logan Gonza... ...Read More »

Lorimer Black may suffer from a serious sleep disorder and an obsession with the labyrinths of the British class system, but Armadillo's peculiar protagonist is the star insurance adjuster of London's Fortress Sure PLC, unkindly known as the Fort. At the very start of William Boyd's noir-ish seventh novel, however, things take a decided swerve for the worse. On a bleak January morning one of ... ...Read More »

This book is the winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award Los Angeles 1936. Kay Fischer, a young, ambitious architect, is shadowed by Salvador Carriscant, an enigmatic stranger claiming to be her father. Within weeks of their first meeting, Kay will join him for an extraordinary journey into the old man's past, initially in search of a murderer, but finally in celebration of a glor... ...Read More »

"The New Confessions" is the outrageous, extraordinary, hilarious and heartbreaking autobiography of John James Todd, a Scotsman born in 1899 and one of the great self-appointed (and failed) geniuses of the twentieth century. 'An often magnificent feat of story-telling and panoramic reconstruction...John James Todd's reminiscences carry us through the ups and downs of a long and lively career that... ...Read More »

Adolescent sex in a Scottish boys' public school ...Oddballs on the seedy side of America ...Murder in a quiet Devon cottage ...Comical, ironical or lacerating - wit is the keynote of these stories, which include two early adventures from the career of Morgan Leafy, glorious anti-hero of William Boyd's prize-winning novel "A Good Man in Africa". 'His writing, with nods in the direction of Borges a... ...Read More »

All Henderson Dores dreams of is fitting in. But America, land of the loony millionaire and the subway poet, down-home Bible-basher and sharp-suited hood, of paralyzing personal frankness and surreally fantasized facilities, is hard enough for an Englishman to fit in to. Henderson could never shed enough inhibitions to become just another weirdo. Or could he This hilarious fish-out-of-water comedy... ...Read More »

Set in the years 1914 to 1918, "An Ice Cream War" follows the fortunes of two English brothers who enlist and fight in German East Africa. Contrasting the vibrant chaos of East Africa with the quiet gentility of Edwardian England, the novel tracks the brothers' very different but equally tragic experiences in the war and the pressures and sorrows of those they leave at home. ...Read More »

Escapee from suburbia, overweight, oversexed ...Morgan Leafy isn't overburdened with worldly success. Actually, he is refreshingly free from it. But then, as a representative of Her Britannic Majesty in tropical Kinjanja, it was not very constructive of him to get involved in wholesale bribery. Nor was it exactly oiling his way up the ladder to hunt down the improbably pointed breasts of his boss'... ...Read More »