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A Private Man

‘A thrilling love story of intellect and passion’ The Observer, best debut novelists of 2026

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A Private Man

By: Stephanie Sy-Quia
Narrated by: John Sackville
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Set in mid-century Rome and England, this forbidden slow-burn love story will take your breath away

‘Lush, evocative and sexy’ – The Sunday Times
'A thrilling love story of intellect and passion' – The Observer
'Truly outstanding: clever, passionate and as clean as a bone' – Melissa Harrison

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 they are thrown together in David's countryside parish, something ignites in each of them, and so begins a decades-long secret with consequences that will reverberate throughout the generations.

READERS LOVE A PRIVATE MAN
‘I just love everything about this book’
‘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’

20th Century Genre Fiction Historical Historical Fiction Political World Literature England
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Critic reviews

Lush, evocative and sexy . . . A truly impressive debut novel, one I could see appearing on the Booker longlist (The Sunday Times)
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 (Alex Clark, The Observer)
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)
Beautiful . . . A story of slow-burn romance, but also of hard-won friendship, the novel explores faith, duty and love. I couldn't put it down. ('Best books of 2026', The Independent)
A finely crafted story, recognisably written by a poet, with a crystal-clear trajectory and moral position
Finely wrought . . . A heady brew, serious and ruminative yet pulsing with sensuality
Inspired by the author’s grandparents, Stephanie Sy-Quia’s assured debut traces a blazing, illicit romance between a Catholic priest and a feminist theologian in England during the social upheavals of the 1960s (Hamilton Cain, TIME)
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)
A thrilling true tale . . . A love story of intellect and passion
All stars
Most relevant
Stephanie Sy-Quia, in this fictionalised account of her maternal grandmother, Margaret, weaves a complex story through the 1950’s & 60’s with the threads of life in 2019, when Margaret is cared for by her grandson
The Author’s talent as a poet is evident throughout & the narrator, John Sackwille, makes the words sing & his French & Italian accents are faultless. This is a book to savour - perfect via the medium of listening; you can replay the lyrical passages!

A Remarkable Portrayal of Love

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