Book Trade Announcement - Here Are the Young Men aquired by Bloomsbury Publishing

Bloomsbury Publishing is delighted to announce the acquisition and almost instant publication of Here Are the Young Men, the extraordinary debut novel by Irish writer Rob Doyle, first published in June 2014 by The Lilliput Press.

As they face the void of their post-school lives, Matthew, Rez, Cocker and Kearney spend their first summer of freedom in a savage apprenticeship on the streets of Dublin. Roaming aimlessly through the city, fuelled by drugs and dark fantasies, the teenagers spiral into self-destruction, fleeing a reality they despise. Here Are the Young Men portrays a chilling spiritual fallout, harbinger of the collapse of a national illusion. Visceral and blackly funny, this debut novel marks the arrival of a powerful literary talent who releases an unnerving anarchic energy to devastating effect.

World English rights to Here Are the Young Men were pre-empted by Alexa von Hirschberg at Bloomsbury in a deal handled by Marianne Gunn O'Connor for The Lilliput Press.

Alexa von Hirschberg says:

'Here Are the Young Men is a fierce, shocking, blackly comic wild ride of a novel – a powerful literary statement about the lives of disaffected and disillusioned young people. Rob Doyle does for Dublin what Irvine Welsh did for Edinburgh in Trainspotting. Brave, insightful, philosophical and heartbreaking, it introduces a talented writer at the beginning of what will be a long career.'

Bloomsbury will publish in paperback in the UK and Ireland on 25th September 2014, and in the US in 2015.