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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.
William Boyd's website
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One of the reasons I knew that my best friend Jessie was going to be my best friend, and that Sam was going to be my husband was because early on in both relationships, we shared a secret: we were both crazy about the British author William Boyd. Specifically, in the case of Sam, we bonded over Boyd's 2001 novel, Any Human Heart, the story of the 20th century through the eyes of an ordinary British man living through it.
So when Sweet Caress landed on my desk, and its editor told me that Boyd's latest novel was in "Any Human Heart" territory, I was especially motivated to read it. Like Any Human Heart – and like another of Boyd's great novels, The New Confessions – it is the story of a time and many places, as experienced by a specific character, in this case a female photographer named Amory Clay. Born in the first decade of the 20th century, Amory – whose father named her that because he'd really wanted a son -- grows up to be independent-minded and ambitious. She travels the world – from 1930s Germany to New York to the battlefields of WWII and ultimately Viet Nam – living her life, telling stories through her photos. An added element to this otherwise...
John Banville, the author of seventeen novels, has been the recipient of the Man Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Any Human Heart
Try:
The Sea
by John Banville
Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec on June 10, 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He attended the University of Chicago, received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Any Human Heart
Try:
Ravelstein
by Saul Bellow
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