Лучшие книги Уильяма Бойда

Уильям Бойд (р. 1952) - один из виднейших английских писателей. Его роман "Нутро любого человека" (Any Human Heart), в 2002 году номинированный на премию Букера, построен в форме личного дневника писателя Логана Маунтстюарта (фигура вымышленная). События длинной (1906-1991) жизни героя вплетаются в ткань истории: в романе фигурируют Вирджиния Вулф, Ивлин Во, Пикассо, Хемингуэй. Герой шапочно знаком практически со всеми значительными художниками XX века: раскланивается на улицах и беседует на вечеринках. Но это не исторический роман; знаковые фигуры - лишь фон или даже средство показать жизнь типичного европейского интеллектуала изнутри.

Руфь Гилмартин, молоденькая аспирантка Оксфордского университета, внезапно узнает, что ее мать, которую окружающие считают благообразной безобидной старушкой, совсем не та, за кого себя выдает... Один из лучших романов Уильяма Бойда, живого классика английской литературы.

Уильям Бойд - один из наиболее популярных и обласканных критикой современных британских авторов. Премии Уитбреда и Риса, номинация на "Букер", высшая премия "Лос-Анджелес таймс" в области литературы - таков неполный перечень заслуг этого самобытного автора. Роман "Броненосец" (Armadillo, 1998) причислен критиками к бриллиантам английской словесности, а сам Бойд назван живым классиком современной литературы.

"Браззавиль-Бич" - роман-притча, который только стилизуется под реальность. Сложные и оказывающиеся условными декорации, равно как и авантюрный сюжет, помогают раскрыть удивительно достоверные характеры героев.

Авторы исследуют основные принципы классификации человечества на расы и народы. Что объединяет и что разобщает жителей земли? Почему у голубоглазых родителей может родиться кареглазый ребенок? Всегда ли мутации приносят организму вред? Книга дает

When William Boyd published his biography of New York modern artist Nat Tate, a huge reception of critics and artists arrived for the launch party, hosted by David Bowie, to toast the late artist's life. Little did they know that the painter Nat Tate, a depressive genius who burned almost all his output before his suicide, never existed. The book was a hoax, and the art world had fallen for it.

Nat Tate is a work of art unto itself-an investigation of the blurry line between the invented and the authentic, and a thoughtful tour through the spirited and occasionally ludicrous American art scene of the 1950s.

William Boyd is the author of nine novels, including A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; and Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year Award.

Praise for Nat Tate:

"William Boyd's description of Tate's working procedure is so vivid that it convinces me that the small oil I picked up on Prince Street, New York, in the late '60s must indeed be one of the lost Third Panel Triptychs. The great sadness of this quiet and moving monograph is that the artist's most profound dread-that God will make you an artist but only a mediocre artist-did not in retrospect apply to Nat Tate."-David Bowie

"A moving account of an artist too well understood by his time."-Gore Vidal(less)

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.

An Ice-Cream War is William Boyd's sparkling debut novel on the grimly comic side of conflict, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'What do you think would happen if I shot an elephant in the balls?' 'I think it would hurt a great deal.' Millions die on the Western Front but in East Africa a quite different war is being waged - one with little point and which is so ignored that it will carry on after the Armistice because no one bothers to tell both sides to stop. As the conflict sweeps up natives and colonials, so those left at home and those fighting abroad find themselves unable to escape the tide of history bearing down on them.

Ein Klick, die Blende schließt – der Startschuss zu einem neuen Leben. Mit sieben hält Amory Clay ihre erste Kamera in Händen, eine Kodak Brownie Nummer 2, und mit ihr sind alle Weichen gestellt. Amory Clay, Fotografin, Reisende, Kriegsberichterstatterin. Statt als Gesellschaftsfotografin in London zu reüssieren, lässt Amory alles Vertraute hinter sich und beginnt 1931 ein Leben voller Unwägbarkeiten in Berlin. Ein Berlin der Nachtclubs, des Jazz, der Extravaganz und Freizügigkeit – und der ersten Anzeichen von Bedrohung und Willkür. Amory Clay, eine Frau, die ihrer Zeit weit voraus ist, die unerschrocken ihren Weg geht, ihre Lieben lebt,…

One May evening in London, as a result of a chance encounter and a split-second decision, a young climatologist called Adam Kindred loses everything - home, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, mobile phone - never to get them back.
Adam has no choice. The police and a ruthless hit man are after him. So he goes underground, joining the ranks of the disappeared that throng London's lowest levels as he struggles to understand how his life has unravelled so spectacularly. His journey of discovery will take him along the River Thames, from affluent Chelsea to the sink estates of the East End. On the way he will encounter aristocrats, prostitutes, evangelists and a policewoman - and version after new version of himself.
William Boyd's electric follow-up to Costa Novel of the Year Restless is a heart-in-mouth conspiracy novel about the fragility of social identity, the corruption at the heart of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the filthy underbelly of every city.

Winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award A turn-of-the-century love story, set in Manila, between an American woman and Filipino-Spanish mestizo by the popular storyteller William Boyd. It's a memorable tale, richly detailed. Los Angeles 1936. Kay Fischer, a young, ambitious architect, is shadowed by Salvador Carriscant, an enigmatic stranger claiming to be her father. Within weeks of their first meeting, Kay will join him for an extraordinary journey into the old man's past, initially in search of a murderer, but finally in celebration of a glorious, undying love.

In his most exhilarating novel yet, Britain’s greatest storyteller transports you from the vibrant streets of sixties London to the sun-soaked cobbles of Cadiz and the frosty squares of Warsaw, as an accidental spy is drawn into the shadows of espionage and obsession.

Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals.

As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spy’, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story. . .

'Sheer, truly brilliant storytelling. He has probably written more classic books than any of his contemporaries’ Daily Telegraph

‘If it’s true escapism you’re after, William Boyd can always be relied upon to transport the reader from reality’ Vogue

'A master storyteller' Observer

Солдат. Фермер. Преступник. Писатель. Отец. Любовник.
Один человек, много жизней.
Родившись в 1799 году, Кэшел Гревилл Росс проживает множество жизней: радостных и горестных, удачных и не очень.
Переезжая из графства Корк в Лондон, из Ватерлоо в Занзибар, Кэшел ищет свою судьбу на разных континентах.
Так в деревне на Шри-Ланке в составе ост-индской армии он оказывается перед страшным моральным выбором. В Пизе он попадает в мир поэтов-романтиков. В Равенне он встречает женщину, которая будет жить в его сердце до конца его дней.
Путешествуя по миру в качестве солдата, фермера, преступника, писателя, отца, любовника, он переживает все превратности судьбы и открывает для себя свою истинную сущность.
Книга Уильяма Бойда “The Romantic” заинтересует тех читателей, кому по душе драматические произведения и художественная проза.
Книга на английском языке.
Soldier. Farmer. Felon. Writer. Father. Lover.
One man, many lives.
Born in 1799, Cashel Greville Ross experiences myriad lives: joyous and devastating, years of luck and unexpected loss. Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace. He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army. He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa. In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days. As he travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, a father, a lover, he experiences all the vicissitudes of life and, through the accelerating turbulence of the nineteenth century, he discovers who he truly is. This is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic.
From one of Britain's best-loved and bestselling writers comes an intimate yet panoramic novel set across the nineteenth century.

'An elating read' Sunday Times

A producer. A novelist. An actress.

It is summer in 1968, the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. There are riots in Paris and the Vietnam War is out of control. While the world is reeling our three characters are involved in making a Swingin' Sixties movie in sunny Brighton.

All are leading secret lives. Elfrida is drowning her writer's block in vodka; Talbot, coping with the daily dysfunc

esearcher Hope Clearwater made a shocking discovery about apes and man . . . Young, alone, and far from her family in Britain, Hope Clearwater contemplates the extraordinary events that left her washed up like driftwood on Brazzaville Beach. It is here, on the distant, lonely outskirts of Africa, where she must come to terms with the perplexing and troubling circumstances of her recent past. For Hope is a survivor of the devastating cruelities of apes and humans alike. And to move forward, she must first grasp some hard and elusive truths: about marriage and madness, about the greed and savagery of charlatan science . . . and about what…

Морган Лифи – едва ли самый респектабельный из представителей Ее Величества в западноафриканском штате Кинджанджа. Однако его поведение не соответствует его высокой должности. Для начала ему, вероятно, не стоило ввязываться в коррупционные схемы. Также ему не следовало прихлестывать за дочерью своего босса... Прямо скажем, не слишком удачный шаг для его карьеры...
Но жизнь молодого Моргана Лифи скоро кардинально изменится, ведь у Моргана на руках труп – и каким-то образом ему придется от него избавиться...
Книга Уильяма Бойда “A Good Man in Africa” заинтересует тех читателей, кому по душе драматические произведения, а также сатирические истории.
Книга на английском языке.
Overweight, oversexed and over there . . .
Morgan Leafy is hardly the most respectable of Her Majesty's representatives in the West African state of Kinjanja. For starters, he probably shouldn't have involved himself in wholesale bribery. Nor was it a good career move to go chasing after his boss's daughter; especially when his doctor banned him from horizontal pursuits.
But life is about to change for young Morgan Leafy. Every betrayal and humiliation he has suffered at the hands of petty persecutors is suddenly put into perspective. For Morgan has a dead body on his hands - and somehow, some way he's going to have to get rid of it . . .

Lorimer Black goes to keep a business appointment and finds a hanged man. This is just the start of what turns out to be a horrendous period for Lorimer as he realizes that he's being set up at work and cast adrift outside the office.