The New Confessions: A rich exploration into one man's life from the bestselling author of Any Human Heart

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'Brilliant ... a Citizen Kane of a novel' Daily Telegraph 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 . . .

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) AnIce Cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and winner of theJohn Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), The New Confessions (1987),Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait BlackMemorial Prize) The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner of the 1993 Sunday ExpressBook 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 hisschooldays, School Ties (1985); and three collections of short stories: On theYankee Station (1981), The Destiny of Nathalie 'X' (1995) and Fascination(2004). He also wrote the speculative memoir of his schooldays, School Ties(1985); three collections of short stories: On the Yankee Station (1981), TheDestiny of Nathalie 'X' (1995) and Fascination (2004). He also wrote thespeculative memoir Nat Tate: an American Artist -- the publication of which, inthe spring of 1998, caused something of a stir on both sides of the Atlantic. Acollection of his non-fiction writings, 1978-2004, entitled Bamboo, waspublished in October 2005. His ninth novel, Restless, was published inSeptember 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.

"An entertaining and darkly comic novel, a novel given weight and ballast by the pressure of recent history." --The New York Times "Here is the rarest of books, the sort you want to read again--even before you've finished it the first time. . . . Boyd gives us a magnificent experience." --People "Boyd has created an important and complex character in a vividly evoked series of settings. . . . He has written a subtle and provocative history of our time." --Los Angeles Times Book Review "Entertaining and intellectually engaging." --Time -An entertaining and darkly comic novel, a novel given weight and ballast by the pressure of recent history.- --The New York Times -Here is the rarest of books, the sort you want to read again--even before you've finished it the first time. . . . Boyd gives us a magnificent experience.- --People -Boyd has created an important and complex character in a vividly evoked series of settings. . . . He has written a subtle and provocative history of our time.- --Los Angeles Times Book Review -Entertaining and intellectually engaging.- --Time