William Boyd

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The Predicament

Gabriel's Moon

The Mirror and the Road: Conversations with William Boyd

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Fascination

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Waiting for Sunrise

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Sweet Caress

An American Artist 1928-1960

Nat Tate

Stars and Bars

The Blue Afternoon

Armadillo

Love is Blind

A Good Man in Africa

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

The New Confessions

Brazzaville Beach

A BBC Two Between the Covers pick

Any Human Heart

The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

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An Ice-cream War

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An Ice-Cream War was the debut novel of William Boyd who would go on to be recognized as 'the finest storyteller of his generation' (Sebastian Faulks). It follows the fortunes of several wildly different characters - including an expat farmer and a young English aristocrat - as they are swept up in the fighting in German East Africa during the First World War, their lives converging amid battle, betrayal, love, comedy and tragedy.

'As ambitious as it is remarkable. Balances on seesaws of innocence and violence, sanity and lunacy, hilarity and horror' The Times 
_____________________________ 
 
'We will all melt like ice-cream in the sun!' 
British soldier, East Africa, 1914 
 
On the Western Front millions are being slaughtered. But in East Africa a ridiculous and utterly ignored campaign is being waged - one that continues after the Armistice because no one bothers to tell the participants to stop. 
 
As the conflict sweeps up Africans and colonials, so those left at home and those fighting abroad find themselves unable to escape the tide of history bearing down on them. 
 
_____________________________ 
 
'A towering achievement' John Carey 
 
'Compulsively readable' Blake Morrison, Observer 
 
'Funny, assured, a seriocomic romp. A study of people caught in the side pockets of calamity that dramatizes their plights with humour, detail and grit' Harper's

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana and grew up there and in Nigeria. His first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize. His other novels include 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), Armadillo (1998), Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet) and Restless (2006, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year Award). His latest novel is Sweet Caress (2015). Some seventeen of his screenplays have been filmed, including The Trench (1999), which he also directed, and he is also the author of four collections of short stories: On the Yankee Station (1981), The Destiny of Nathalie 'X' (1995), Fascination (2004) and The Dream Lover (2008). He is married and divides his time between London and South West France.

An Ice-cream War

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