In our latest interview with a Club 1541 member, we were delighted to be able to sit down with former student Michael Amherst before the release of his new novel, The Boyhood of Cain.

Hi Michael, thank you very much for sitting down with us. To start off, when were you at King's?

2000-2002

Which House were you in?

Wheeler

What are your favourite memories from your time at King's?

I really loved my time in Sixth Form. I made friends who still form an integral part of my life now. That included teachers, who were so formative to my life, my interests and what felt possible. In terms of memories, it is the everyday things that stand out most: Mr Hadfield courageously sharing his crisis of faith in morning prayers in a way that, to me, as a teenager, felt real and honest when religion can so often feel pedalled as easy or glib; Dr Craddock drawing us out in English class as to what was going on in our lives, whenever any of us struggled with a text, gently taking it back to our own concerns and showing how these character’s actions could make sense to our lives and therefore how alive literature is; Miss B making the art room a space of fun, a place of play and creative anarchy as well as showing us, by her own example, that a life dedicated to art is possible.

Ms. Haines pushed us, certainly pushed me, to realise that my understanding of the world is not objective - my truth is not everyone else’s truth - and that race, gender, class and sexuality all colour what we take as fact. I pushed back so hard at the time but have now come to see she was right in all she taught me - rarely does a day go by when I don’t think of how her classes set me up for a more complex sense of my place in the world.

But also History with Mr Evans and Mrs Hobbs and Theology with Mr Webster - what I still marvel at now is how we were treated like adults and that if we shared a passion for their subject, as I did, you felt like you were being spoken to on the same level, as someone with a shared interest. I still find myself reading philosophy and wondering ‘I wonder what Mr Webster would say about this.'

What did you do after leaving school and where has your career taken you?

For a while I thought about a career in academia but that is hard and, frankly, I think I’m both too much of a generalist and too lacking in a narrow focus for the dedicated work it requires. Then for a few years I worked in various organisations concerned with prison reform, both here in the UK, and later a US organisation called Just Detention International that fights against sexual abuse in custodial settings around the world. My years at JDI were wonderful - it was hard, emotionally draining work but it was also incredible to be involved with such an effective organisation and to meet people who were inspiring, not in spite of, but perhaps because of their overcoming such terrible adversity. I was writing while doing some of that work and then was eventually able to write more and more. For as long as I can sustain it, I now hope to write full time.

Did you know that you always wanted to be an Author and do you think King's helped you realise that that was a goal of yours?

As a child I wanted to be an author and then in my early teens I went off books for a while and it stopped being an aspiration for me. That being said, I then wanted to be a journalist, so I think I always hoped to do something with words. When I stopped reading, I watched a lot of TV - and TV still plays in important part in my life. I regard those shows I was absorbed by in the 90s, be it Ab Fab or Victoria Wood to Stephen Poliakoff’s Perfect Strangers, as seminal to my kind of cultural landscape. I don’t know if being a writer was ever discussed at King’s - but I do feel those teachers I remember made it very clear by their example that a passion for a subject, a desire to make sense of and understand the world, was an important aspect of life and one that could be harnessed. I never felt, except from a few quarters, that I was ‘funnelled’ towards certain choices or paths predicated on advancement or money. Instead, my overriding sense was that I had teachers for whom art really MATTERED, that it is the stuff of life.

Tell us about your debut novel - 'The Boyhood of Cain'...

Published by Faber in the UK and Riverhead in the US, The Boyhood of Cain follows Danny, chiefly in his final year of preparatory school, at 12-13. Having previously felt him and his family special, he has growing sense that maybe he’s not made right for the world. When he a new boy, Philip, arrives at the school he finds in him everything he feels he should be - maybe this is the boy he is meant to be.

For a long time I'd been interested in notions of justice or fairness and the story of Cain and Abel spoke to me about that: why are some accepted and others not? How do we live with arbitrary injustice? When writing my nonfiction book, Go the Way Your Blood Beats, I felt torn between that need to accept life as it is so as to live, yet also the fight for rights and justice. The latter can become kind of crippling if the sense of injustice eats you up. I believe James Baldwin talked of that paradox of somehow allowing both. Also, in the background all the time was Anthony Minghella's film of The Talented Mr Ripley. I love that film and also that he wrote the opening song, 'Lullaby of Cain' for it, and that he found the commonality between Cain and Ripley.

I think there is also something about queer experience which maps easily onto notions of desire mixed with jealousy: does Ripley want Dickie or to be Dickie? And does the latter lead to murderous rage at how far he falls short of the ideal? Quite late in the novel's writing, I found an interpretation of Cain and Abel I now can't refind. I think it was the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips citing Jung, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, the idea is that Cain and Abel is a story of accepting arbitrary injustice. God is the arbiter of their respective gifts as there is no higher arbiter than God. But when faced with arbitrary injustice we can do nothing but accept it and carry on with our lives. Otherwise, resentment, envy, anger eat us up as it did Cain. I don't know if I agree with that but I found it an interesting interpretation. I wanted to look at a child who has a growing sense of awareness that he is not as he should be, or not as HE feels he should be, in relation to an idealised other. And what that does to you, especially if it is reinforced by others. But also, if you have such an acute awareness and consciousness of yourself, does this become disabling in how we live, if we process everything through rationality, rather than allowing simple feeling. Finally, if we are in flight from ourselves do we lose touch with who we are and what we want.

How can we get our hands on a copy?

It is published February 13th, 2025. You can preorder it already with Amazon or Waterstones but, as they say, it should be available from all good bookshops.

What does the future hold? (Both in work and outside of work)

I’m currently gearing up for publicity and events for the book. That includes events with other authors - I’m very lucky to be interviewing Andre Aciman in a few weeks time. I’ve recently started work on a new novel and have been grappling for over a year on an essay about creativity. I wonder if they might truly be the same thing. There’s a lot of talk about the role of AI in writing and creativity. But, as many writers know, you don’t really know what you’re going to write until you write it and also creativity is an embodied process. I believe that writing - art more broadly - speaks to the physical, irrational, animal parts of ourselves. The parts that bleed. A machine can’t do that - at best it can imitate what has already been said about what it means to be alive and inhabit a body. That isn’t art. Nick Cave is wonderful on this.

And finally, if you could give one piece of advice to the current crop of sixth formers about to join the real world, or hoping to become an Author too, what would it be?

Don’t worry about getting it right. Don’t worry about what you ’should’ be doing, particularly relative to your peers. Sometimes things take time - sometimes a very long time, with numerous detours. You will find your life taking off at different times to those around you. But if there is something you want to do, persevere. Trust your gut - there is a part of you, deep down, that knows. Trust it. There was a time when the prison work felt like an adjunct, or a sideline, to what I should ‘really’ be doing, but in fact it opened up so many opportunities I would never have had otherwise as well as being just really meaningful work. Boredom is good. Be bored - it's often where the ideas come from. Also ignore those who only speak of financial renumeration - there are riches beyond the merely financial. That being said, we all need to eat and it is hard. But we are good in this country at having small pots of money aspiring writers and artists can apply for - whether it's the Arts Council, writers residencies, grants. I’ve had a residency that occurred because I asked if they’d consider doing it. It can be a hustle and you may need sidelines. However, being able to do something you genuinely love and care about day after day is a real privilege - which is not to say it is always enjoyable, it isn’t. But it is a privilege.