Picador wins five-way auction for Stephanie Sy-Quia's tale of 'forbidden love and ardent faith'

Picador publishing director Anne Meadows has triumphed in a five-way auction for prize-winning poet Stephanie Sy-Quia’s debut novel, a tale of "forbidden love and ardent faith" that is a fictionalised reimagining of the story of her grandparents.

Meadows acquired world English rights to A Private Man from Matthew Marland at RCW Literary Agency for publication in spring 2026. Elisabeth Schmitz at Grove Atlantic acquired North American rights from Pan Macmillan’s Jon Mitchell. Meanwhile, German rights were sold by Sam Coates at RCW to Suhrkamp in a pre-empt. 

The book is set in the 1960s and follows Catholic priest David, who is "handsome, charismatic and sworn to celibacy". Everything changes when David meets Margaret: they have an instant and "soul-deep" attraction and together they set out to change the church forever. The publisher describes the "gorgeous" novel as a story of forbidden love, ardent faith, devotion and sacrifice, with the consequences of Margaret and David’s unlikely union reverberating across the generations. 

California-born, London-based Sy-Quia’s first book, Amnion (Granta), won the 2021 Forward Prize for Best First Collection, followed by an Eric Gregory Award and a Somerset Maugham Award in 2022. It was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2022, the 2022 Laurel Prize and the 2022 Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize.

Meadows said: "Everyone in the Picador team fell in love with David and Margaret: their brilliant minds, their devotion and their passion. To have their extraordinary (and true) story told by Stephanie Sy-Quia is a gift: this is a novel of deep desires and conflicted longings, voiced by a prize-winning poet, a stylist in a firmament of her own."

Sy-Quia added: "I can’t wait for readers to meet these characters based on my grandparents."