William Boyd

(born 1952 - ) - Fife background

William Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana, in 1952, the son of expatriate Scots from Fife. He regards himself as a Scottish writer, saying recently in the Scottish Review of Books, "If someone asks me what nationality I am, I unhesitatingly say I’m Scottish... I'm also aware sometimes I'm included in anthologies of Scottish literature, and sometimes I'm excluded... In Scotland, the net is not being thrown wide enough." (Here, at BooksfromScotland.com, we're very happy to include William Boyd.)

His writing brought him success almost immediately with his first novel, A Good Man in Africa, winning the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Award in 1981. The following year, his next novel An Ice-Cream War was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Since then, he has been a prolific writer and screenwriter with some of his novels and short stories adapting to radio and the small screen.

Boyd's most recent works include Bamboo, an autobiographical selection of non-fiction writings from the past three decades, and the novel Ordinary Thunderstorms.

He lives in London.

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Any Human Heart - Paperback
This is the story of Logan Mountstuart, told through his journals. His travels take the reader from Uruguay to Oxford, Paris, the Bahamas, New York and Africa. This is the story of a life lived to the full - and a journey deep into a very human heart.
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Armadillo - Paperback
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.
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The Blue Afternoon - Paperback
An enigmatic stranger is shadowing Kay Fisher, a young ambitious architect in Los Angeles during the mid-1930s. He claims to be her father and through the story the reader is led from a murder hunt to a celebration of a glorious, undying love.
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A Good Man In Africa - Paperback
Morgan Leafy isn't overburdened with worldly success. He is a representative of Her Britannic Majesty in tropical Kinjanja. Falling back on his reserves of misanthropy and guile, he has to fight off the sea of humiliation & betrayal that threatens him.
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The New Confessions - Paperback
'The New Confessions' takes the form of an autobiography, that of John James Todd, a Scotsman born in 1899 and one of the great self-appointed (and failed) geniuses of the 20th century.
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Ordinary Thunderstorms - Paperback
What is the devastating effect on your life when, through no fault of your own, you lose everything - home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, money, credit cards, mobile phone - and you can never get them back? This book tells the story of a young man called Adam Kindred.
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Restless - Paperback
What happens to your life when everything you thought you knew about your mother turns out to be an elaborate lie? Ruth Gilmartin discovers the strange and haunting truth about her mother, Sally, during the long hot summer of 1976.
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Stars And Bars - Paperback
All Henderson Dores dreams of is fitting in. But America, land of the loony millionaire, the subway poet, and surreally fantasized facilities, is hard enough for an Englishman to fit in to. He couldn't become just another weirdo, could he?