There can’t be too many subjects more difficult to write about than child prostitution. How much more difficult to write about a young man who survived being forced into prostitution when young, and grew up to become the part-owner and master of... a male whorehouse. For Michael, so badly damaged that his emotions are all but non-existent, his house is a way to protect boys who would otherwise wind up either in the most brutal whorehouses or dead in the streets. In a time and place where love between adult males is a crime, but purchased sex with male children is condoned, Michael’s House is the closest thing to a refuge for at least a few boys with no other choices.

Without Janus’s support, the house couldn’t exist, and with it, they still have to struggle to keep the boys clothed and fed, and operate the house within a set of rules that protects the boys from abuse by their clients. The friendship between Michael and Janus, the pampered nephew of the prime minister, tests Janus’s sense of propriety and morality, yet he throws his income into Michael’s project and his reputation into the gutter for associating openly with the former prostitute.

Peterson leaves us in no doubt what life is like for poor and unwanted children in his fictional world, but he does it without resorting to graphic descriptions. “Delicate” may seem like an odd word to use for such a story, but it’s written with a delicacy that reveals the humanity of its characters rather than exploiting them. Whipster is a deeply moving story about survival in the underbelly of a culture that despises the people it uses and casts them off like so much garbage.