Michael Amherst is the author of Go the Way Your Blood Beats: On Truth, Bisexuality & Desire, which won the 2019 Stonewall Book Award for nonfiction. He is the winner of the 2020 Hubert Butler Essay Prize, and his short fiction has been longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. His journalism and criticism have been published in The Guardian and New Statesman, among other outlets. The Boyhood of Cain is his first novel.

"Amherst has Coetzee's surface calmness, inner turbulence, understated emotion and muted wit...With The Boyhood of Cain, a star is born." -The Times

"Amherst's words matter as they limn Daniel's life in beautifully realized, psychologically acute, and nearly granular detail. [Daniel] is an unfailingly fascinating, memorable character. A reader can't ask for anything more." -Booklist, STARRED REVIEW

"Amherst writes with a measured pace and careful attention to his youthful protagonist's malleability as Daniel questions his sexuality and other supposed binaries of life. The result is an authentic depiction of youthful fears and confusions." -Publishers Weekly

"Approaches this subject with skill and sensitivity... Amherst writes in a crisp fashion, eschewing unnecessary detail, which leads to a book that feels stripped down to its most essential elements... an interesting and unusual book." -John Boyne, Irish Times

"When Amherst embraces ambiguity, in the moments where Daniel must admit no answer is to be found, the novel contains the same eerie spark that makes the bildungsromans of Hermann Hesse crackle. A coming-of-adolescence novel that rigorously avoids cliche." -Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW

"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." -André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name

"A beautiful and profound novel about a boy's coming to consciousness as his family falls apart. Utterly compelling and quietly devastating, I read this book with my heart in my mouth and could not put it down." -Mary Costello, author of The River Capture

"Told in a voice that is both bracing and embracing...Amherst delivers Danny's spellbinding story with rare sharpness, profundity and heart." -Michael Donkor, author of Housegirl

"A gorgeous and propulsive portrait of the end of childhood...Beautifully written, with unwavering empathy and precise, perfect details, Amherst is a true talent. I loved it." -Anna Hogeland, author of The Long Answer

Publisher: Riverhead Books

Pub date: 2026-02-24

Length: 208 pages