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The New Confessions

The New Confessions

A rich exploration into one man’s life from the bestselling author of Any Human Heart

Summary

'Brilliant. A Citizen Kane of a novel' Daily Telegraph
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Meet John James Todd:
Scotsman, auteur, Rousseau-fanatic - and 'subversive element'

Born in 1899, John James Todd is one of the great, failed geniuses of the last century. His reminiscences, collected in The New Confessions, take us from Edinburgh to the Western Front, the Berlin film-world in the Twenties to Hollywood in the Thirties, Forties and beyond.

Suffering imprisonment, shooting, marriage, fatherhood, divorce and McCarthyism, Todd is a hostage to good fortune, ill-judgement, bad luck, the vast sweep of history and the cruel, cruel hand of fate . . .

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'A magnificent feat of storytelling and panoramic reconstruction'
Observer

'Paced and plotted with sinewy, unfailing skill . . . Boyd has given us a work of rich, ripe and immensely enjoyable entertainment' Sunday Times

'Simply the best realistic storyteller of his generation' Independent

About the author

William Boyd

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 with Channel 4. In 2005, Boyd was awarded the CBE. He is married and divides his time between London and south-west France.
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