Free Audiobook : Any Human Heart, by William Boyd

Renowned best-selling author William Boyd, lauded as a "master storyteller" by the Chicago Tribune and praised by Time as a "gutsy writer who is good company to keep," presents his most riveting and cleverly crafted novel yet. This book vividly brings to life the chaos and milestones of our era through the personal diaries of Logan Mountstuart—renowned writer, passionate lover, and worldly man. Spanning the "riotous and disorganized reality" of Mountstuart's 85 years, the novel weaves a narrative filled with extraordinary events, heartbreak, and humor.

The story begins in Mountstuart's youth in Montevideo, Uruguay, progresses through his Oxford days in the 1920s and his first book's publication, and follows him to Paris where he mingles with the likes of Joyce, Picasso, and Hemingway. His journey continues in Spain during the civil war, and then we find him as a naval intelligence agent in World War II, entangled in a murder scandal involving the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The postwar era takes him to New York as an art dealer amidst 1950s abstract expressionism, then to West Africa, London with an encounter involving the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and ultimately to France, where in his later years, he finds a degree of hard-earned peace.

This novel is an ambitious, emotionally resonant work that captures the heroism and absurdities of life throughout the 20th century.