Faber announces second book from International Booker winner Rijneveld

Faber has announced a second novel from Lucas Rijneveld, winner of the 2020 International Booker Prize. 

Commissioning editor Emmie Francis acquired world rights, excluding Canada and the US, to My Heavenly Favourite from Atlas Contact. Publication is scheduled for 1st February 2024, which Faber will mark with Rijneveld’s first visit to the UK. 

My Heavenly Favourite is translated from Dutch by Michele Hutchison. Rijneveld and Hutchison won the International Booker Prize in 2020 for Rijneveld’s debut novel, The Discomfort of Evening (Faber). 

The synopsis for My Heavenly Favourite reads: “In the tempestuous summer of 2005, a 14-year-old farmer’s daughter makes friends with the local veterinarian who looks after her father’s cows. He has reached ‘the biblical age of seven times seven’ and is trying to escape trauma, while she is trying to escape into a world of fantasy. Their obsessive reliance on each other’s stories builds into a terrifying trap, with a confession at the heart of it that threatens to rip their small community apart.” 

Francis said: ‘Indelible, audacious and impossible to put down, My Heavenly Favourite is powered by the paradoxical beauty of its prose. It confirms Rijneveld as one of the bravest and brilliant writers on the world stage.”