William Boyd | Any Human Heart

“What a time I’ve had … Every decade. All my ups and downs. My rollercoaster. Not so much a rollercoaster – a rollercoaster’s too smooth – a yo-yo, rather – a jerking, spinning toy in the hands of a maladroit child, more like, trying too hard, too impatiently eager to learn how  to operate his new yo-yo.” 

William Boyd, Any Human Heart

Our Choice

Any Human Heart. The Intimate Journals of Logan Mountstuart, published in 2002 nominated for the Booker Prize, took place in the hearts of readers from the very beginning, just as many fellow writers love this novel, which lets the history of the 20th-century pass before our eyes: inventive, funny and playful.

About the Author

William Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana, in 1952. He grew up there and in Nigeria. In 1981 he published his first novel, A Good Man in Africa, for which he won the Whitbread Literary Award and the Somerset Maugham Award. He has published sixteen books, several screenplays, collections of short stories, and non-fiction writings. His novels and stories have been published worldwide and translated into over thirty languages. 

About the Typography

Ramiro Espinoza studied type design in The Hague and Antwerp. There he came across the work of a lesser-known French punchcutter, François Guyot, who worked in Antwerp during the sixteenth century. Espinoza’s design combines the elegance of the historic model with contemporary efficiency. A good Italic was needed to distinguish the comments between the sections of the story. We also used swashes and embellishments, which suit the wide range of Boyd/Mountstuart’s imagination. Any Human Heart is written as a diary, conjuring the image of a printed calendar where you tear off a little note every new day. The aptly named Haus Stencil (initially designed for door numbers) gave us this look and provided a spot of color on the page. 

About the Design

As we take the term book jacket very seriously, this one evokes the dark-blue pinstripe, the epitome of business suites and suitable for the story of a man who always wore a suit, even when he survived canned dog food.

About the production and materials

Printed in dark blue 
Matching dark blue sewn binding
Letterpress printing: Die Lettertypen Berlin  on a 1954 Original Heidelberg Cylinder
Book jacket printed on Gmund Cotton Paper. 
Paper: 90g Schleipen Werkdruck Endpapers: Peyer Surbalin Linea 
Cover linen: Schabert Brillianta 
Set in Guyot by Ramiro Espinoza, plus FF Real and Haus Stencil by Erik Spiekermann
432 p. 
ISBN 978-3-949164-04-0

Free Shipping