William Boyd

'Marvellously paced and ingeniously plotted. A real page-turner' Observer_________________________One winter morning, Lorimer Black - young, good-looking, but with a somewhat troubled expression - goes to keep a perfectly routine business appointment and finds a hanged man. A bad start to the day, by anyone's standards, and an ominous portent. For Lorimer works in the only-slightly corrupt business of financial adjusting, and he is about to learn that it is much uglier - and even more crooked - than he ever imagined. Suddenly, he's being unfairly blamed for all kinds of irregularities. Next, his life is threatened. And, lastly, he's coming to realise that the life he has led till now - the one someone wants to rub out - is one big fat lie . . ._________________________'A joy to read: easy to get into, addictively plotted and beautifully written' Daily Mail'A novel that is truly comic, and, like all true comedy, also disturbing' Scotsman'A pleasure to read' Independent on Sunday

This edition originally published in 1962. The problems of life and government which are still the central theme of the Republic are still with us but the views presented in it were the outcome of strenuous discussion and they come to the modern reader as a challenge. To get to the heart of them he must continue the discussion for himself and make his own applications. This book will help him on his way.

WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZE 'A brilliant storyteller . . . a book which stretches, tantalizes and delights' Financial Times_____________________________________On Brazzaville Beach, on the edge of Africa, Hope Clearwater ponders the strange circumstances that led her to leave her husband John, and his mathematical obsessions, in England and venture to Africa to help world-renowned scientist Eugene Mallabar with his studies of wild chimps. But the more Hope studies Mallabar, the more she comes to believe that something isn't right. That behind Mallabar, and his obsessive work, there lies another, more sinister truth: one that might also help explain Hope's reasons for leaving England . . ._____________________________________'A most extraordinary parable about mankind. Quite unlike anything else I have read' Sunday Express'Brilliant, daring. A gripping and compulsive story' Herald'Hilarious and edgy' Sunday Times

Throughout his career as a novelist, William Boyd has never stopped writing non-fiction, providing a fascinating counterpoint to the world of his novels. "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 and his years at boarding school. From Pablo Picasso to the allure of the British caff, from Charles Dickens to Catherine Deneuve, from mini-cabs to Brideshead Revisited, this collection proves an engrossing and revealing companion to the work of one of Britain's leading novelists.

Funny, moving and sharply observed, these stories are confirmation of Boyd's status as one of English fiction's finest writers. Here are twenty-four gripping tales told in bold, distinct voices from Brazil to Africa and from Nice to Hollywood. This eclectic collection by the acclaimed author of "Restless and Brazzaville Beach" is a must-read for any lover of the short story.

"Granta 100" will be edited by William Boyd and it will include pieces by: Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Bill Buford, AM Homes, Ian Jack, Doris Lessing, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ian McEwan, Jayne Anne Phillips, Nicholas Shakespeare and Helen Simpson.

What does 'story-teller' suggest? Folk-tales, myths, sea voyages, a cartoon campfire: in short, a way of writing that is distinctly unmodern. Granta 21 presents the work of three authors who are, in their way, distinctly and deliberately unmodern. Bruce Chatwin follows nomads through the Sahara and the Aborigines across Australia, as they sing an entire continent into existence. Ryszard Kapuscinski returns from central Africa with stories - 'felt on the surface of my skin' - to tell people desperate to discover the outside world. And in 'A Story for Aesop', John Berger defines the story-teller: a witness who has become historian, a contemporary who is not modern - detached, sceptical and intensely compassionate.

RESTLESS by William Boyd is now a two-part movie starring Charlotte Rampling, Michael Gambon, and Rufus Sewell, airing on the BBC in the UK and on the Sundance Channel in the U.S. in December, 2012. It is Paris, 1939. Twenty-eight year old Eva Delectorskaya is at the funeral of her beloved younger brother. Standing among her family and friends she notices a stranger. Lucas Romer is a patrician looking Englishman with a secretive air and a persuasive manner. He also has a mysterious connection to Kolia, Eva's murdered brother. Romer recruits Eva and soon she is traveling to Scotland to be trained as a spy and work for his underground network. After a successful covert operation in Belgium, she is sent to New York City, where she is involved in manipulating the press in order to shift American public sentiment toward getting involved in WWII.Three decades on and Eva has buried her dangerous history. She is now Sally Gilmartin, a respectable English widow, living in a picturesque Cotswold village. No one, not even her daughter Ruth, knows her real identity. But once a spy, always a spy. Sally has far too many secrets, and she has no one to trust. Before it is too late, she must confront the demons of her past. This time though she can't do it alone, she needs Ruth's help.

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 English wife and mother. But once a spy, always a spy. Now she must complete one final assignment, and this time Eva can't do it alone: she needs her daughter's help.

William Boyd s masterful new novel tells, in a series of intimate journals, the story of Logan Mountstuart writer, lover, art dealer, spy as he makes his often precarious way through the twentieth century."

In the small African republic of Kinjanja, Morgan Leafy, a carefree British civil servant perennially in search of sexual adventure, must deal with Harvard-educated tribal chiefs, unalterably genteel Englishwomen, and a cursed lightning-struck corpse. Winner of the Whitbread Award. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Sharply observed and brilliantly plotted, Stars and Barsis an uproarious portrait of culture clash deep in the heart of the American South, by one of contemporary literature's most imaginative novelists. A recent transfer to Manhattan has inspired art assessor Henderson Dores to shed his British reserve and aspire to the impulsive and breezy nature of Americans. But when Loomis Gage, an eccentric millionaire, invites him to appraise his small collection of Impressionist paintings, Dores's plans quite literally go south. Stranded at a remote mansion in the Georgia countryside, Dores is received by the bizarre Gage family with Anglophobic slurs, nausea-inducing food, ludicrous death threats, and a menacing face off with competing art dealers. By the time he manages to sneak back to New York City-sporting only a cardboard box-Henderson Dores realizes he is fast on the way to becoming a naturalized citizen.

Wiliam Boyd, winner of the Whitbread and Somerset Maugham Awards, introduces unlikely heroes desperate to redeem their unsatisfying lives. From California poolsides to the battlegrounds of Vietnam, here is a world populated by weary souls who turn to fantasy as their sole escape from life's inequities. Stranded in an African hotel during a coup, an oafish Englishman impresses a young stewardess with stories of an enchanted life completely at odds with his sordid existence in "The Coup." In the title story, an arrogant, sadistic American pilot in Vietnam underestimaets the power of revenge when he relentlessly persecutes a member of his maintenance crew. With droll humor and rare compassion, Boyd's enthralling stories remind us of his stature as one of contemporary fiction's finest storytellers.

In this extraordinary novel, William Boyd presents the autobiography of John James Todd, whose uncanny and exhilarating life as one of the most unappreciated geniuses of the twentieth century is equal parts Laurence Stern, Charles Dickens, Robertson Davies, and Saul Bellow, and a hundred percent William Boyd. From his birth in 1899, Todd was doomed. Emerging from his angst-filled childhood, he rushes into the throes of the twentieth century on the Western Front during the Great War, and quickly changes his role on the battlefield from cannon fodder to cameraman. When he becomes a prisoner of war, he discovers Rousseau's Confessions, and dedicates his life to bringing the memoir to the silver screen. Plagued by bad luck and blind ambition, Todd becomes a celebrated London upstart, a Weimar luminary, and finally a disgruntled director of cowboy movies and the eleventh member of the Hollywood Ten. Ambitious and entertaining, Boyd has invented a most irresistible hero.

From the award-winning author of A Good Man Africa and An Ice-Cream War comes Armadillo, a brilliant satirical noir set in contemporary London. To his colleagues, Lorimer Black, the handsome, mild-mannered insurance adjuster rising through the ranks of his London firm, is known as the guy who has it all: the sleek suits, the enviable status. But when Lorimer arrives at a routine business appointment and finds his client hanging from a water pipe, his life spirals out of control. His company car is blowtorched after he investigates a fire at a luxury hotel. He becomes the fall guy of a new colleague who puts the company in the red and the victim of a vicious attack by the possessive husband of a mysterious actress. As Lorimer becomes increasingly entangled in an apparent conspiracy that involves everyone he knows, his own past comes to light. A brilliant satirical noir, Armadillo confirms Boyd's place as England's most versatile, sublime novelist.

"Rich in character and incident, An Ice-Cream War fulfills the ambition of the historical novel at its best." --The New York Times Book Review Booker Prize Finalist "Boyd has more than fulfilled the bright promise of his] first novel. . . . He is capable not only of some very funny satire but also of seriousness and compassion." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times 1914. In a hotel room in German East Africa, American farmer Walter Smith dreams of Theodore Roosevelt. As he sleeps, a railway passenger swats at flies, regretting her decision to return to the Dark Continent--and to her husband. On a faraway English riverbank, a jealous Felix Cobb watches his brother swim, and curses his sister-in-law-to-be. And in the background of the world's daily chatter: rumors of an Anglo-German conflict, the likes of which no one has ever seen. In An Ice-Cream War, William Boyd brilliantly evokes the private dramas of a generation upswept by the winds of war. After his German neighbor burns his crops--with an apology and a smile--Walter Smith takes up arms on behalf of Great Britain. And when Felix's brother marches off to defend British East Africa, he pursues, against his better judgment, a forbidden love affair. As the sons of the world match wits and weapons on a continent thousands of miles from home, desperation makes bedfellows of enemies and traitors of friends and family. By turns comic and quietly wise, An Ice-Cream War deftly renders lives capsized by violence, chance, and the irrepressible human capacity for love. "Funny, assured, and cleanly, expansively told, a seriocomic romp. Boyd gives us studies of people caught in the side pockets of calamity and dramatizes their plights with humor, detail and grit." --Harper's "Boyd has crafted a quiet, seamless prose in which story and characters flow effortlessly out of a fertile imagination. . . . The reader emerges deeply moved." --Newsday

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. 208 pp. Author tour. 15,000 print.