Charles William Johns 
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.

About the author

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.