Any Human Heart: A BBC Two Between the Covers pick

William Boyd

Mar 2003 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

DISCOVER THE BOOKER PRIZE LONGLISTED NOVEL ABOUT ONE HEART'S LOVES AND LOSSES FROM ICONIC STORYTELLER WILLIAM BOYD

Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary but Logan Mountstuart's contains more than its fair share of both. As a writer who finds inspiration with Hemingway and Virginia Woolf, a spy recruited by Ian Fleming and betrayed in the war and an art-dealer in '60s New York, Logan mixes with the movers and shakers of his times. But as a son, friend, lover and husband, he makes the same mistakes we all do in our search for happiness.

Here, then, is the story of a life lived to the full - and a journey deep into a very human heart.

'One of the things this book does so brilliantly, is it so authentically recreates historical characters' Ben Miller, on BBC 2's Between The Covers

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'Astonishing, touching, extremely funny. A brilliant evocation of a past era and an immensely readable story' Sunday Telegraph

'Superb, wonderful, enjoyable' Guardian

'Generous, witty, sneakily profound' Evening Standard

Any Human Heart was adapted for a Channel 4 drama starring Kim Cattrall, Gillian Anderson, Matthew Macfadyen and Jim Broadbent and is perfect for readers of Sebastian Faulks and Hilary Mantel.

Ratings and reviews

It started well and was funny, some scathing lines in the first few chapters but it got duller and duller as time went on. Never really like a book with sex scenes in it or constant references to sex so this book was boring and juvenile imo

Beautifully told story, well worth reading

About the author

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana and grew up there and in Nigeria. His first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize. His other novels include An Ice Cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), The New Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award), Armadillo (1998), Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet) and Restless (2006, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year Award). His latest novel is Sweet Caress (2015). Some seventeen of his screenplays have been filmed, including The Trench (1999), which he also directed, and he is also the author of four collections of short stories: On the Yankee Station (1981), The Destiny of Nathalie 'X' (1995), Fascination (2004) and The Dream Lover (2008). He is married and divides his time between London and South West France.