And He Shall Appear

by Kate van der Borgh

Overview

From a mesmerizing new literary voice comes a story of obsessive friendship, chilling powers, and untimely death for readers of dark academia classics like If We Were Villains and The Secret History.
 
An unnamed narrator arrives at Cambridge University in the early aughts determined to reinvent himself. His northern accent marks him as an outsider, but thanks to his musical gifts, he manages to fall in with his wealthy classmate, Bryn Cavendish.

A charismatic party host and talented magician, Bryn enthralls the narrator. But something seems to happen to those who challenge or simply irk Bryn—and they aren’t ever the same again. 

The narrator begins to suspect that Bryn may be concealing terrifying gifts under the guise of magic tricks. As the tension between them grows, a harrowing encounter is followed by Bryn’s death. 

Alternating between their time as students and the narrator’s return to Cambridge years later, where he fears the ghosts of his past are waiting for him, And He Shall Appear performs an astounding slight-of-hand that throws every version of the story into question.

This propulsive novel about the dark power of privilege will haunt readers like a familiar piece of music with endless iterations.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781454952619
Publisher:	Union Square & Co.
Publication date:	10/01/2024
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

By day, Kate van der Borgh is a freelance copywriter, and by night, she’s usually composing or playing music. She grew up in Lancashire and went on to study music at Cambridge, so there’s a reasonable amount of her in her narrator—including the fact that she was a pianist and reluctant bassoonist. She has, however, never had reason to suspect that her best friend has occult powers. Her short fiction has been published by The Fiction Desk, and she’s a graduate of Faber’s six-month Writing a Novel course. She is based in London.

Read an Excerpt

Before I could reply, he lunged, grabbing me in a headlock. As my weight went backwards my feet came off the pool floor, and I felt myself dropping again like a stone beneath the water – there, an airless moment of thrashing limbs and white noise. Just as the panic began to rise, Bryn took me under the armpits and hauled me up through the surface, both of us spluttering and shouting, flailing wildly, our laughter eventually dissolving into even, exhausted breaths.
Water lapping our chests, we faced one another in the shivering dark. God, I felt so awake. Bryn’s mouth fell slightly open, and I thought he might speak – but he only stared silently at me, his gleeful expression softening into something like seriousness. I became very aware of our exposed skin, waxen beneath the distant electric glow, of our breath, steaming in the chlorinated cold. The way the light rippled off him, he didn’t look himself – his face, his eyes, unfamiliar.
He stepped towards me. Thinking I was in his way, I moved back – but he took another step, and another, making waves that wrapped around my trembling body like searching hands. When he was very close, close enough that he might whisper in my ear, I thought I felt the heat coming from him, like an aura, as if – even in this freezing pool – he couldn’t ever be cold. Beneath the water, his hand moved so close to mine. There, alone with him in the frigid water’s surge and swell, what I felt was abject terror.
 

Editorial Reviews

"The dread creeps up like a specter over your shoulder in this haunting debut that echoes notes of M. R. James down the shadowy halls of modern academia."—Brian McAuley, author of Curse of the Reaper and Candy Cain Kills

"Unsettling and richly atmospheric, And He Shall Appear is a bacchanalian campus noir that will keep you up at night wondering what is a trick or magic, and what is it we choose not to see. I loved this tense tale of intoxication, infatuation, and friendship, where Saltburn meets TheSecret History with a wholly original splash of the occult hiding in the shadows of Cambridge."—Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West, shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024
 

From the Publisher