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Viking has scooped an "exquisite" new novel from William Boyd.
Publisher Mary Mount acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to The Romantic from Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown. It will be published in hardback next autumn.
The new novel is set entirely in the 19th century and follows the "roller-coaster fortunes" of a man as he tries to negotiate the random stages and vicissitudes of his life. The publisher said: "He is variously a soldier, a lover, a farmer, a bankrupt, a jailbird, a writer, an explorer—and many other manifestations—and, finally, a minor diplomat, an Honorary Consul, based in Trieste where he sees out the end of his days."
Mount commented: "It is such a thrill to be publishing a new William Boyd novel—his characters are so exquisitely realised. There is no one like him".
Boyd added: "All long lives are, by definition, epic. The human condition as experienced by one unique individual is always worth examining—and celebrating, wherever possible. Which is why I find myself compelled to write whole-life, cradle-to-grave novels, I suppose. The Romantic is my fourth whole-life novel after The New Confessions (Penguin), Any Human Heart (Penguin) and Sweet Caress (Bloomsbury) and looks at one man’s journey from his birth in 1799 to his death in 1882. And he experiences one hell of a lot of the human condition in his eight decades, that’s for sure!"
Boyd has sold 2.03 million print books for £15.6m via Nielsen BookScan in the UK. Restless (Bloomsbury) is his bestseller, with 379,100 copies sold in paperback.