The Romantic: A novel

Written by William Boyd

Narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith

From the award-winning, internationally best-selling author, a beguiling romp of a novel, at once intimate and panoramic, about the adventures and misadventures of a nineteenth-century everyman

"Picaresque, big-hearted and moving, this is Boyd at the top of his game." —The Guardian

One man, many lives . . . Cashel Greville Ross experiences more of everything than most, from the rapturous to the devastating, from surprising good luck to unexpected loss. Born in 1799, Cashel seeks his fortune across the turbulence of multiple continents, from County Cork to rural Massachusetts, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, embedded with the East Indian Army in Sri Lanka, sunning himself alongside the Romantic poets in Pisa. He travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, even a father. And he experiences all the vicissitudes of existence, including a once-in-a-lifetime love that will haunt the rest of his days. In the end, his great accomplishment is to discover who he truly is—which is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780593744055

William Boyd

William Boyd is also the author of A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys War Prize and short-listed for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year; Ordinary Thunderstorms; and Waiting for Sunrise, among other books. He lives in London.