New Confessions, The

Description: "The New Confessions" is a wickedly funny novel by bestselling author William Boyd. "Brilliant ...a Citizen Kane of a novel". ("Daily Telegraph"). "The New Confessions" is the outrageous, extraordinary, hilarious and heartbreaking autobiography of John James Todd, a Scotsman born in 1899 and one of the great self-appointed (and failed) geniuses of the twentieth century. "An often magnificent feat of story-telling and panoramic reconstruction...John James Todd's reminiscences carry us through the ups and downs of a long and lively career that begins in genteel Edinburgh, devastatingly detours out to the Western Front, forks off, after a period of cosy family life in London, to the electric excitements of the Berlin film-world of the Twenties, then moves on to Hollywood ...to ordeal by McCarthyism and eventual escape to Europe". (Peter Kemp, "Observer"). "The New Confessions" will be loved by fans of "An Ice-cream War" and "Any Human Heart", as well as readers of Ben Macintyre, Sebastian Faulks, Nick Hornby and Hilary Mantel. William Boyd has received world-wide acclaim for his novels. They are: "A Good Man in Africa" (1981, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize), "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 and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, 1995), "Armadillo" (1998) and "Any Human Heart" (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet). He is also the author of a collection of screenplays and a memoir of his school days, "School Ties" (1985); and three collections of short stories: "On the Yankee Station" (1981), "The Destiny of Nathalie 'X'" (1995) and "Fascination" (2004). He also wrote the speculative memoir "Nat Tate: an American Artist" - the publication of which, in the spring of 1998, caused something of a stir on both sides of the Atlantic. A collection of his non-fiction writings, 1978-2004, entitled "Bamboo", was published in October 2005. His ninth novel, "Restless", was published in September 2006 (Costa Book Award, Novel of the Year 2006) and his tenth novel, "Ordinary Thunderstorms", published September 2009. His most recent novel is "Waiting For Sunrise" which published in February 2011.

Author Biography: William Boyd was born in Ghana in 1952. He was brought up there and in Nigeria. He was educated at the universities of Nice, Glasgow and Oxford. He is the author of a number of acclaimed and hugely popular novels and three volumes of short stories, and the recipient of many prizes, including the Whitbread First Novel Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award. He is married and lives in London