Fake Minsk - Who Made the Lamb (self published, 2026)

A while back I wrote about the novella Trapped in Amber, a short book by the pseudonymous Fake Minsk.  In the time since, Minsk has been hard at work on a new story: Who Made the Lamb. As good as Amber is - and I think it’s an interesting story with a lot of potential - Minsk’s new one has really raised the bar and I think it’s one of the best novels I’ve read this year.

Minsk is a Canadian living in the UK, a cis man who has described himself to me as someone who is merely empathetic to trans identities and not hiding any secrets about their life. I have no reason to doubt him or pry any further into his identity. Indeed, it reminds me of a line by WH Auden about how writers should remain anonymous to let their work speak for itself. And so it does: Minsk’s writing shows considerable empathy for internal conflict, wears its Sally Rooney influence openly on its sleeve, and is compelling enough through some 125,000 words.

The story opens with a young man named Alex yelling at a woman during a job interview. We immediately get to see our protagonist at their worst: applying for a job that’s clearly meant for a woman, picking a fight over DEI policies, and getting called out in an interview:

He tried to protest, and she cut him off. “Don’t waste my fucking time, okay? The listing was clearly for a woman. Think you’re the first guy to come in here, spouting shit about diversity discrimination? Fuck!” She leaned back in her chair, glaring at him. “I’ve got a job to fill, and I don’t have time for this bullshit. If I don’t fill this slot today, I lose my budget.” She swept his CV into a waiting bin.

By the time he gets back to his sister’s flat, he’s worked himself up into a lather about misandry, a meritocracy that would put him at the front of the line, and generally pissing off his sister. See he’s been crashing there for weeks, not paying rent or getting a job, and generally rotting in a pool of right wing content. Throughout the book, Alex namedrops Dr. Jordan Peterson as a main influence, second only to his dead dad - a guy who in life comes across as a sexist boar. His sister Sophie sums it up like this:

“Three months, Alex. I’ve had it up to here with you. Three months I’ve put up with your shit. You’re my brother and I love you, but I’ve had enough. You don’t pay rent, you eat my food, you bitch nonstop, and you’re a sexist cunt, too. If I hear you mansplain another Jordan fucking Peterson video again, I’ll scream.”

So she gives him an ultimatum: dress as a girl for an interview and see if he can get the job or hit the street. After all, he did play Juliet in a school play. This gentle push is enough to get Alex on board and he finds himself presenting as a woman named Blake Morgan at a job interview at an old school wealth management firm named Lockwood and Carmichael. To his surprise, Blake gets the job.

While this sounds like the concept behind a million trans wish fulfilment stories, Minsk’s story remains character focused: Sophie, the sister who’s struggling with an unhappy brother that drives her mad; Amber, a work friend that is trying to draw Blake out of her shell; Luca, a school friend who has since come out of the closet and is trying to figure out himself as a young gay man. Blake’s lack of self confidence means that she’s always chipping away at herself in her internal monologue, even as people around her treat her as a young professional woman. As the book progresses, Blake becomes lost in her role, a new life for her unrolling rapidly as Alex’s looks more and more like a dead end. It all climaxes in a dizzy few days where she confronts her old friend while also being invited to a ball hosted by an important client of her firm, not to mention tensions between her and Sophie coming to a head.

I mentioned earlier that Minsk wears his influences openly. Here he draws on Sally Rooney for inspiration: chapter four is told without any dialogue, while later in the book the dialogue becomes part of the text in a similar way to Rooney’s novels: 

And your sister? Alex asked. How’s Beth doing?

She’s doing okay, he said. Started seeing this bloke, guy called Jacob. 

Jacob?

Seems alright. 

Another long silence. Then Alex said, I’m grabbing another, want one?

Luca knocked back his wine, passed him the empty glass. Go on.

Note the way Minsk sparingly used punctuation or quotation marks, the way the dialogue comes in clipped, short phrases. Through the book, you can read Minsk coming into his own with his writing: the prose improves and stylistically he takes more risks, like those seen above. It pays off: as Blake’s anxieties grow, her thoughts grow scattered and tense; Minsk nails her anxiety as it rises to a fever pitch. 

As of this writing, Minsk is suggesting that Who Made the Lamb is part one of a duology, and is also due for revisions. Which is fair: there are moments that can tightened up, and the beginning can be brought up to the higher standard of the final chapters. Perhaps soon it will be available as a paid ebook (or, fingers crossed, in print!). But for now copies can be had via Minsk’s Patreon or serially on several platforms: Scribblehub, Archive of Our Own, and elsewhere. Do check it out: I haven’t enjoyed any serial story as much since Ranked Competitive Breast Growth and frankly, I’m enjoying this as much as anything being traditionally published.