The Destiny of Nathalie X (22 page)

Mr. Koenig is telling me that there are fifteen Koenig mini-diners in the Los Angeles area and he would like, he hopes, he wonders if it would be possible for me to redesign them—all of them—in this streamline, modern streamline sort of style.

All scattered. Freer. Freer movements, freer dynamics. I remember, and smile to myself. I had never imagined a future designing hot dog stands in a city on the West Coast of America. It is a kind of continuity, I suppose. We need not plummet. Paul would approve of me and what I have done, I think, as a vindication of his principle.

I hear myself accepting Mr. Koenig’s offer and allow him to kiss me on the cheek once more—but my mind is off once again, a continent and an ocean away in drab and misty Dessau. Gudrun Velk is trudging up the gentle slope of Grillparzerstrasse, her suitcase heavy in her hand, taking the shortcut from the station, heading back to the small apartment on Grenz Weg which she shares with her friend Utta Benrath and hoping, wondering, now that she has managed to catch an early train from Sorau, if Tobias would have some time to see her alone that afternoon.

ALSO BY
W
ILLIAM
B
OYD

THE BLUE AFTERNOON

Sprawling between three continents and two historical eras, William Boyd’s lushly atmospheric novel opens in Los Angeles in 1936, when architect Kay Fischer is approached by an elderly man named Salvador Carriscant, who claims to be her father—and who insists she accompany him to Lisbon in a search for the great lost love of his life. Suspenseful, stylishly written, and teeming with historical detail,
The Blue Afternoon
is a triumph.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times
Book Prize in Fiction
Fiction/0-679-77260-X

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WILLIAM BOYD

William Boyd is the author of ten novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of essays and criticism, and twelve screenplays that have been filmed. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the
Los Angeles Times
Book Prize for Fiction. He lives in London and southwest France.

www.williamboyd.co.uk

Books by William Boyd

A Good Man in Africa

On the Yankee Station

An Ice-Cream War

Stars and Bars

School Ties

The New Confessions

Brazzaville Beach

The Blue Afternoon

The Destiny of Nathalie X

Armadillo

Nat Tate: An American Artist

Any Human Heart

Fascination

Restless

Bamboo

Ordinary Thunderstorms

BOOKS BY
W
ILLIAM
B
OYD

ARMADILLO

To his colleagues, Lorimer Black, the mild-mannered insurance adjuster, is known as the guy who has it all: the sleek suits, the enviable status. But when Lorimer arrives at a business appointment and finds his client hanging from a pipe, his life spirals out of control. His car is blowtorched after he investigates a fire at a luxury hotel. He becomes the fall guy of a colleague who puts the company in the red and the victim of a vicious attack by the possessive husband of a mysterious actress. As Lorimer becomes entangled in a conspiracy that involves everyone he knows, his own past comes to light.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70216-7

THE BLUE AFTERNOON

This lushly atmospheric novel opens in Los Angeles in 1936, when architect Kay Fischer is approached by an elderly man named Salvador Carriscant, who claims to be her father—and who insists that she accompany him to Lisbon in a search for the great lost love of his life. En route to Portugal, Carriscant, a former surgeon in the war-torn Philippines, tells Kay the story behind her secret parentage. Set against the sultry blue afternoons of Manila in 1902, his is a tale of grisly murders, ghastly medical rivalries, and an illicit passion that will consume Carriscant’s life and his daughter’s imagination.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-77260-6

THE DESTINY OF NATHALIE X
and Other Stories

With these eleven startling, exotic, and deliciously inventive new stories, Boyd charts the euphoria of love, the anguish of loss, and the gnawings of ambition across several countries and the expanse of the twentieth century. From a tourist who returns to his hotel room to find a countess amorously awaiting him, to a couple who meet once a year in Lisbon to indulge in erotic delirium, Boyd’s characters are unforgettable. Shimmering with meaning,
The Destiny of Nathalie X
compels us to consider how we thread our experience into narrative.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-76784-8

FASCINATION

One of the most beguiling storytellers on either side of the Atlantic delivers a luminous new collection whose fourteen stories are a series of variations on the theme of love—and its shady cousin lust. In “Notebook No. 9,” a film director’s journal becomes an unintended chronicle of his deepening and ruinous obsession with a leading lady. In “A Haunting,” a well-behaved English architect feels the chill onset of an otherworldly visitation that will shatter his family and career. In “Varengeville,” an unhappy young boy, neglected by both his father and adulterous mother, finds an unexpected friend in an elderly painter. Wise, unsettling, humane, and endlessly surprising,
Fascination
lives up to its title on every page.

Fiction/Literature/978-1-4000-7849-3

A GOOD MAN IN AFRICA

In the small African republic of Kinjanja, British diplomat Morgan Leafy bumbles heavily through his job. His love of women, his fondness for drink, and his loathing for the country prove formidable obstacles on his road to any kind of success. But when he becomes an operative in Operation Kingpin and is charged with monitoring the front-runner in Kinjanja’s national elections, Morgan senses an opportunity to achieve real professional recognition and, more importantly, reassignment. After he finds himself being blackmailed, diagnosed with a venereal disease, attempting bribery, and confounded with a dead body, Morgan realizes that very little is going according to plan.

Fiction/Literature/978-1-4000-3002-6

AN ICE-CREAM WAR

In 1914, in a hotel room in German East Africa, American farmer Walter Smith dreams of Theodore Roosevelt. As he sleeps, a railway passenger swats at flies, regretting her decision to return to the Dark Continent and to her husband. On a faraway English riverbank, a jealous Felix Cobb watches his brother swim, and curses his sister-in-law-to-be. And in the background of the world’s daily chatter swirl rumors of an Anglo-German conflict, the likes of which no one has ever seen. As the sons of the world match wits and weapons on a continent thousands of miles from home, desperation makes bedfellows of enemies and traitors of friends and family.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70502-1

THE NEW CONFESSIONS

In this extraordinary novel, William Boyd presents the autobiography of John James Todd. From his birth in 1899, Todd was doomed. Emerging from his angst-filled childhood, he rushes into the throes of the twentieth century on the Western Front during the Great War, and quickly changes his role on the battlefield from cannon fodder to cameraman. When he becomes a prisoner of war, he discovers Rousseau’s
Confessions
, and dedicates his life to bringing the memoir to the silver screen. Plagued by bad luck and blind ambition, Todd becomes a celebrated London upstart, a Weimar luminary, and finally a disgruntled director of cowboy movies and the eleventh member of the Hollywood Ten.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70503-8

ON THE YANKEE STATION

These fifteen beguiling stories are populated by unlikely heroes who, desperate to redeem their unsatisfying lives, turn to fantasy as their sole escape from life’s inequities. Stranded in an African hotel during a coup, an oafish Englishman impresses a stewardess with tales of an enchanted life completely at odds with his sordid existence. In “Hardly Ever,” a Scottish boy impresses his friends by recounting with prurient elaboration his awkward courtship of a local girl. In the title story, a sadistic American pilot in Vietnam underestimates the power of revenge when he relentlessly persecutes a member of his maintenance crew.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70511-3

STARS AND BARS

A recent arrival to Manhattan, Englishman Henderson Dores believes the move has given him a new lease on life. With a plum position as a fine art assessor and a chance to reconcile with his ex-wife, Dores is eager to trade his British reserve for the impulsive nature of Americans. But when Loomis Gage, an eccentric millionaire, invites him to Georgia to appraise his small collection of Impressionist paintings, Dores’s plans take an abrupt turn. Stranded at a remote mansion after his car wheels mysteriously disappear, Dores is received by the bizarre Gage family with nausea-inducing food, dubious information, and ludicrous death threats.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70501-4

ALSO AVAILABLE
Any Human Heart
, 978-1-4000-3100-9

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