A final novel by the late American writer and cultural anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston, will be published for the first time next year.

The author of Their Eyes Were Watching God was working on a sequel to her 1939 novel Moses, Man of the Mountain when she died in 1960. That sequel, titled The Life of Herod the Great, will be available to buy in January 2025.

Until recently, the manuscript had been in Hurston’s archives at the University of Florida, accessible only to scholars. It is unfinished and will be published in that state, alongside commentary from academic and literary critic Deborah Plant.

The forthcoming title is a historical novel that tells the story of Herod the Great, a Judean king who lived during the first century BCE. According to the account in the Bible, Herod was responsible for the “massacre of the innocents”, ordering the execution of all male children who are two years old or younger around Bethlehem. However, most Herod biographers do not believe this event occurred.

Hurston paints the ruler “in a light very different from his villainous portrayal in the New Testament”, according to the book’s UK publisher HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins. “In Hurston’s retelling, Herod is a forerunner of Christ, a religious and philosophical man who enriched Jewish culture and lived a life of valour and vision.”

The historical Herod “seemed to have been singled out by some deity and especially endowed to attract the zigzag lightning of fate”, Hurston wrote. The Life of Herod the Great will also feature Hurston’s findings from letters she sent to friends and associates about Herod’s rise, reign and his waning days.

HQ Fiction’s editorial director Clare Gordon described the long-awaited sequel as being “nothing short of a masterpiece”.

“Although it was written in the 1950s, its message still resounds with the world of today,” Gordon said. “As Zora herself writes in her foreword: ‘It is history, and history alone, which will mature our judgment and prepare us to take right views.’”

The Life of Herod the Great will be published on 7 January 2025, on what would have been Hurston’s 134th birthday.

• This article was amended on 9 August 2024. An earlier version said the manuscript had been in Hurston’s archives at the University of Kansas, rather than Florida, based on incorrect information supplied to us.