My Heavenly Favourite

SENSATIONAL WINNERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE



'It's been a long time since a novel has destroyed me like this . . . Electrifying . . . One of the boldest writers alive today.' Max Porter



'A novel of exquisite discomfort and delicious poetry . . . Made me laugh and gasp . . . I'm in awe.' Brandon Taylor



'Rejuvenating, glorious, brilliant. A book about obsession with prose that obsessed me from the first line.' Daisy Johnson



In the tempestuous summer of 2005, a local veterinarian becomes enraptured by a 14-year-old farmer's daughter - his 'favourite' - as he tends her father's cows. This deeply troubled soul is our narrator: a man who believes he offers the object of his love a tantalizing path out of the constrictions of her conservative rural life, a chance to escape to a world of fantasy. But the obsessive reliance he cultivates builds into a terrifying trap, with a crime and confession at the heart of it that threatens to rip their small community apart.



An unflinching excavation of taboos and social norms, My Heavenly Favourite is a torrent of grief and obsession. The remarkable and chilling successor to Lucas Rijneveld's international sensation, The Discomfort of Evening, this profane novel is powered by the paradoxical beauty of its prose, which holds the reader fast to the page.





Translated by Michele Hutchison

This novel is about an adult who is sexually attracted to a minor and contains sexual violence.



Lucas Rijneveld was born in 1991 in the Netherlands and grew up in a Reformed farming family. His first novel, The Discomfort of Evening, won the International Booker Prize 2020 and the ANV Debut Prize. In the same year the Dutch edition of My Heavenly Favourite was published and was shortlisted for the Libris Literature Prize and was awarded both the Boon and F. Bordewijk prizes. Rijneveld's work has been translated into 39 languages.

Michele Hutchison is a literary translator from Dutch and French into English. In 2020, Michele won the Vondel Translation Prize for her translation of 'Stage Four' by Sander Kollaard and the International Booker Prize together with author Lucas Rijneveld for The Discomfort of Evening.