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A Private Man

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What to expect

'It’s a rare pleasure to read this novel' - Sarah Moss

'A rich, elegant and textured novel . . . brilliant' - Seán Hewitt

'Truly Outstanding' - Melissa Harrison

An exquisite slow-burn forbidden love story, laced with passion and faith.

Rome, 1953. David is young, handsome, charismatic and sworn to celibacy. He is freshly ordained, and about to return to England to begin life as a priest. Devotion to God is all he’s ever known.

In London, Margaret is entangled in an impossible love affair. Committed to living on her own terms without sacrificing her faith, she becomes drawn to a women’s movement challenging the archaic rules of the Church.

When their lives are thrown together at a Catholic college in a quiet village, an undeniable connection forms between them. And so begins a story of forbidden love, sacrifice and secrets, with consequences that will reverberate across the generations.

Stephanie Sy-Quia’s A Private Man is a stunning story of devotion and sacrifice, and of the consequences of our actions that ripple throughout generations.

Critics Review

I loved A Private Man. Sy-Quia writes beautifully and energetically about faith and food and clothes and sex. Her prose embraces beauty and her characters are complex and compelling. It’s a rare pleasure to read this novel
Sarah Moss, author of Ripeness
A rich, elegant and textured novel full of quiet, beautiful revolutions, which sparks with erotic friction. A Private Man is a brilliant debut about secrets and belief, about the collision of lives, and about the liberation of being remade
Seán Hewitt, author of Open, Heaven
A Private Man is a warm, tender novel, written with such beauty and precision that it frequently stopped me in my tracks. I read it slowly, carefully, marvelling at an image, savouring each glint and turn
Alex Hyde, author of Violets
A luminous, deeply thoughtful and moving love story. Breathtakingly honest and true on sex, on art, on the analogy between religious and corporeal pleasure, A Private Man is also a meditation on care, faith, doubt and loss. A beautiful and wise novel
Luke Kennard, author of The Answer to Everything
A Private Man is truly outstanding: clever, passionate and as clean as a bone
Melissa Harrison, author of All Among the Barley
Stephanie Sy-Quia's novel takes the truly singular story of a truly singular soul and makes it into something approachable, understandable and familiar. This is a novel brimming with empathy, tenderness and wisdom
Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, author of The End of Nightwork

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