Tag: michael amherst

Interviews, my reading life

The Boyhood of Cain author Michael Amherst is always inspired by JM Coetzee and Damon Galgut

by AdamLeave a Comment on The Boyhood of Cain author Michael Amherst is always inspired by JM Coetzee and Damon Galgut

Michael Amherst‘s The Boyhood of Cain originally came out in March 2025. Now, the paperback of the book, which André Aciman called “A powerful, searing tale told by a boy facing the plenitude of life but hemmed in by a world so…ordinary that he can’t wait either to flee it or be drowned in it,” has been released.

We chatted with Amherst a year ago when the hardcover of The Boyhood of Cain came out. Now, we’ve asked him to answer our reucrring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that shaped his life and influenced his writing.

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Interviews

Writing Towards Discomfort: Michael Amherst on The Boyhood of Cain

by Adam1 Comment on Writing Towards Discomfort: Michael Amherst on The Boyhood of Cain
Writing Towards Discomfort: Michael Amherst on The Boyhood of Cain

Michael Amherst is a writer whose work has appeared in The Guardian, New Statesman, and other publications. He is the author of Go the Way Your Blood Beats: On Truth, Bisexuality & Desire, which won the 2019 Stonewall Book Award for nonfiction, and his debut novel, The Boyhood of Cain, is out now. The novel is a coming-of-age novel about a boy named Daniel, whose intense longing for love and recognition leads him into a complex web of desire, power, and betrayal. Set in the English countryside, the story follows his deep attachment to a new classmate and their shared fascination with a charismatic teacher, forcing Daniel to navigate the painful contradictions of devotion and self-discovery.

Amherst and I chatted via email about the intuitive nature of writing, the tension between knowing and uncovering a story, and how setting shapes the characters who inhabit it.

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