Synopsis
Set in mid-century Rome and England, this forbidden slow-burn love story will take your breath away
'A truly impressive debut novel, one I could see appearing on the Booker longlist' – The Sunday Times
'It’s a rare pleasure to read this novel' - Sarah Moss
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.
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.
READERS LOVE A PRIVATE MAN
‘Lives and breathes along with you as you read’
‘Radiating warmth, tinged by inevitable sadness. I loved it’
‘Beautifully written and deeply moving’
‘A work of quiet power that leaves you bereft at its end’
‘I just love everything about this book’
Details
19 February 2026
9781035052653Reviews
Lush, evocative and sexy . . . A truly impressive debut novel, one I could see appearing on the Booker longlist
A deft work of fiction . . . Sy-Quia is wonderfully interested in beauty, conveying it with a poet’s gift for compression and echo . . . A novel stiff with tension, with sorrow, fear and disappointment wound into its most ecstatic and transcendent moments
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
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
