by William Boyd
First published 2017
Logan Mountstuart begins the twentieth century as a young writer seeking his place in the world. He finds inspiration among literary giants like Hemingway in Paris and Virginia Woolf in London, but his path takes unexpected turns. Ian Fleming recruits him as a spy, only for betrayal to follow during wartime. Later, Logan reinvents himself as an art dealer in 1960s New York, moving among the influential figures of his era. Yet for all his extraordinary encounters with history's movers and shakers, Logan struggles with the same fundamental challenges that define any human existence. As a son, friend, lover, and husband, he stumbles through the universal search for happiness and meaning. His life spans an entire century, filled with both remarkable adventures and ordinary disappointments. Through Logan's journey, Boyd captures how every individual life contains elements of both the exceptional and the mundane, showing that even the most eventful existence is ultimately shaped by deeply personal moments of connection and loss.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, biographical-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, unreliable-narrator
Setting: London, New York, Paris
Period: 1900s, 1960s
490 pages · Paperback · Penguin