Malchus

Malchus, historically the first Roman to convert to Christianity, and the last to receive physical healing from Christ before his crucifixion, is born again in the 21st century. What will follow from this ""re-birth,"" in a time where there is no absolute right or wrong, no morality or immorality? What ensues as true crime in a world full of police sirens?
Malchus is explored through the first-person style of traditional confessional writing. The book's title Malchus refers to the servant of the Jewish High Priest Caiaphas who participated in the arrest of Jesus yet later converted to Christianity. The constructed distinction between Roman attitudes and Christian attitudes is decisive in this book. The entire book spans the day of a paranoid and sensitive man who claims to himself that he is guilty of some ""horrendous act of evil."" As we follow this man we become acquainted with his attitudes (despair, guilt, nihilism, idealism, individualism). We soon realize that the man is in-fact proud and protective of this ""horrendous act of evil.""
Malchus has been heralded as ""the first truly existential work of the 21st century"" and has been described as Proustian in detail and description.

""The description and allegory reminded me of Marcel Proust . . . Malchus keeps the reader in the sweet spot between exposition and introspection. . . . Malchus is short and sharp, almost jarringly so. And it's written in a heady blend of neurosis and hyper-lucidity.""
--Jill de Laat, Director, Melrose Books

""Almost musical in its intensity and expressive force. Elusive, perplexing, meditative, a travelogue of a restless mind.""
--Petteri Pietikainen, author of Madness: A History

""The first truly existential work of the twenty-first century worth talking about.""
--Benjamin Smith, editor of Horror, Sleaze, Trash

""A fascinating work.""
--Christopher Hamilton-Emery, Salt Publishing; author of Radio Nostalgia

""Malchus hits the reader like a punch to the gut--or better, like an electric shock to the brain. A work of intense alienation. Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and Camus updated for the twenty-first century.""
--Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University; author of Post-Cinematic Affect

""A delightful narrative on the tragedy of the human condition. Johns' beautiful exposition of Malchus is an analysis of the sublime nature of the neurotic in a world of sirens and commotion. A triumph!""
--John O'Donoghue, psychotherapist/psychoanalyst for Spirasi

""Johns offers a compelling novella somewhat in the spirit of Blanchot's The Madness of the Day.""
--Anthony Richards, University of Lincoln, UK


Charles William Johns is a Research Assistant in The English & Journalism Department at The University of Lincoln. He is author of both Incompatible Ballerina and Other Essays (John Hunt, 2015) and Neurosis and Assimilation (Springer, 2016). He is currently editing a collection of essays entitled The Neurotic Turn with contributions from Graham Harman, Nick Land, Benjamin Noys, and Patricia Reed, which will be published by Repeater Books in 2017.