Faber nabs Michael Amherst's 'poignant' début novel

Faber has pre-empted Michael Amherst’s The Boyhood of Cain, a "poignant" debut novel about "a boy on the precipice of adulthood".

Associate publisher Louisa Joyner and editor Aisling Brennan bought UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from John Ash at CAA. Publication is scheduled for 13th February 2025 and Riverhead will publish in the US.

"Danny’s family live in a large house close to the school where his father is headmaster," the synopsis says. "At school, his father’s importance gives Danny certain privileges, but it also sets him apart from his classmates. When a new boy Philip, for whom everything seems easy, arrives, he surprises Danny by wanting to be friends [...] And then Danny’s world tilts: his father loses his job, and their house."

Amherst said: "To be published by Faber is the dream. I couldn’t believe how quickly Louisa Joyner read The Boyhood of Cain and was so touched by her profound and intuitive response to it and its characters. Since then, she and Aisling have made it an immeasurably better book while always sensitive to my concerns."

Joyner added: "Michael Amherst’s writing has the qualities of the finest linen—combining a lightness of touch that is matched only by a technical precision that allows the prose to envelope the reader, and yet also somehow seem weightless. It was a novel Aisling and I simply knew we must publish from the first moment we read, so we’re thrilled to be welcoming Michael to the list."