Any Human Heart, William Boyd
Any Human Heart, William Boyd
List: $27.95 | Sale: $19.57
Club: $13.97

Any Human Heart

Author: William Boyd

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 15 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/27/2011


Synopsis

Bestselling author William Boydthe novelist who has been called a master storyteller (Chicago Tribune) and a gutsy writer who is good company to keep (Time)here gives us his most entertaining, sly, and compelling novel to date. The novel evokes the tumult, events, and iconic faces of our time as it tells the story of Logan Mountstuartwriter, lover, and man of the worldthrough his intimate journals. It is the riotous and disorganized reality of Mountstuarts eightyfive years in all their extraordinary, tragic, and humorous aspects. The journals begin with his boyhood in Montevideo, Uruguay, then move to Oxford in the 1920s and the publication of his first book, then on to Paris where he meets Joyce, Picasso, Hemingway, et al., and to Spain, where he covers the civil war. During World War II, we see him as an agent for naval intelligence, becoming embroiled in a murder scandal that involves the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The postwar years bring him to New York as an art dealer in the world of 1950s abstract expressionism, then on to West Africa, to London where he has a runin with the BaaderMeinhof Gang, and, finally, to France where, in his old age, he acquires a measure of hardwon serenity. This is a moving, ambitious, and richly conceived novel that summons up the heroics and follies of twentiethcentury life.

About William Boyd

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. Any Human Heart was longlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into a TV series. His books have won many literary awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, and the Costa Book Award. He was named a Granta Best Young Novelist in 1983, and in 2005, he was awarded the CBE. Boyd is married and divides his time between London and southwest France.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Vit on April 01, 2022

Can any single human heart take in all the history of the twentieth century? Any Human Heart is a story of one such heart which could hold within almost all the crucial events of this turbulent age. And the story is as sorrowful and rich as was the history of the century… But there is always hope fo......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on August 17, 2022

I found this book to be different, in style, to others I’ve read by this author. After a couple of chapters I really wasn’t sure if I liked it at all but by the end I was totally captivated. It’s written as a series of journal (diary) entries and tells the story of a life that’s been lived in every......more

Goodreads review by J. on November 04, 2015

Thick, dense, and sprawling... not my usual fare, I must say, but I simply could not put this book down. 'Any Human Heart' is one of those rare long novels that pulls you in and holds you tight throughout its many pages. Exceptionally well written, William Boyd has a rare gift for effective and robu......more

Goodreads review by Tea on March 31, 2013

Britanci su snimili sjajan film snimljen po ovoj knjizi... Kako to samo oni umeju da urade... :) A na ovog autora obratite paznju, odlican je.........more

Goodreads review by Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) on June 27, 2021

With the opening Henry James quote, I immediately knew this used bookstore find was a keeper. Structured as the collected diaries of Logan Mountstuart, "Any Human Heart" is the story of a life that spanned most of the twentieth century. Because of the format, the style changes as Logan ages, there ar......more