Any Human Heart

“NEVER SAY YOU KNOW THE LAST WORD ABOUT ANY HUMAN HEART”

Large 8vo., bright red publisher’s boards, spine lettered in gilt with discrete publisher’s device to foot; bright green endpapers; together in the unclipped pictorial dustwrapper designed by Robin Rout; pp. [xii], 5-503, [i]; the book very nearly fine, with ever-so-slight toning to the text block and light pushing to spine tips; the wrapper with a couple of tiny creases, otherwise also fine. 

First edition. With TLS and Sunday Times review clippings loosely inserted, as well as the original sales receipt. 

One of Boyd’s most popular and enduring works, Any Human Heart follows the protagonist Logan Mountstuart, whose entire life (1906–1991) covers almost all of the defining episodes of the twentieth century. From rendezvous with Hemingway in Paris and Virginia Woolf in London, to Mountstuart’s time in the war office alongside Ian Fleming, and through to his later life dealing in art in 1960s New York, Boyd’s narrative aims to show how extraordinary events can be juxtaposed with ordinary life, in a startling mix of fact and fiction. Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2002, one Guardian article at the time claimed that the narrative was so convincing that at the time of publication many readers believed the character to have been real. 

A wonderful copy. 

SKU: 1800156