John Niven's sequel Kill 'Em All coming in 2018

William Heinemann will publish the “long-awaited” sequel to Kill Your Friends by John Niven, a decade after his cult debut.

Jason Arthur, the company’s publisher, has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Kill ’Em All by John Niven from Clare Conville at the C&W Agency.

William Heinemann also published Kill Your Friends (2008) about a ruthless A&R agent, set in the music scene of 1997 and all of Niven’s subsequent novels. Niven’s debut was adapted into a film of the same name in 2015 starring Nicholas Hoult.

Kill ‘Em All features the return of Steven Stelfox, 20 years on from his Britpop heyday, now living in a world dominated by Trump and Brexit. He is tasked with sorting out the “huge headache” of Lucius Du Pre, previously the world’s biggest pop star before he turned into a “a helpless junkie and a prolific, unrepentant paedophile”.

A spokesperson for the publisher said: “With stealth and cunning, Stelfox begins to chart a road out of the nightmare. Needless to say, the body count on this road will be high.”

Arthur said he was “filled with a delicious excitement” about the book. He said: “Niven has never written a dull novel, and I’ve been lucky enough to publish every single one he’s written since I published Kill Your Friends in 2008.

“That book does reserve a special place in my heart, so I am filled with delicious excitement at the prospect of unleashing Stelfox – a creation of unparalleled awfulness – on the world again.”

Arthur said that Brexit Britain “deserves” the nihilistic anti-hero.

Niven said: “Next year sees ten years since Kill Your Friends was published and I liked the symmetry of setting the sequel in 2017 – exactly 20 years after setting of the first  book.”

He added: “It also occurred to me that today, the world of Trump and Brexit, was the perfect moment to bring Steven Stelfox back.”

Kill ’Em All will be published by William Heinemann in autumn 2018 and in paperback by Windmill in 2019.