Meet the hottest-tipped debut novelists of 2019

The Silent Patient is narrated by Theo Faber, a psychotherapist determined to discover why Alicia Berenson, a famous artist accused of murdering her husband, has refused to speak since her husband’s death. The therapeutic setting was inspired by Michaelides’s own experience. “Therapy is very important to me and has been a major part of my life,” he says.

Running through the novel is the Greek myth of Alcestis, and Euripides’s play of the same name. The Alcestis theme is perhaps one of the reasons that The Silent Patient is finding such traction both among early readers and the tranche of movie executives who fought to option it. With its story of female sacrifice and the silencing of a woman post-trauma, it feels highly relevant in a post #MeToo world. “It’s about silence as a weapon,” Michaelides says. “And it was very clear in my head when I was writing the book that Alicia was surrounded by these men who were imprisoning her. Like Alcestis, Alicia is trapped and she’s denied a voice. It’s a lifetime of being made to think that she wasn’t worthy, she wasn’t good enough, and maybe that’s something that a lot of women [readers] have been responding to.”

The novel has already been optioned by Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B, with Michaelides due to write the screenplay, a fitting circularity for a novelist who has spent the past 15 years working as a screenwriter.