William The Conqueror: A Novel

In this wildly exhilarating debut novel set across the lush landscapes of Cornwall, New Zealand, and London, alive with music, adventure, addiction, and intra-psychic war, Ruarri Joseph proves himself to be much more than a velvet razor of a singer, songwriter, and performer. With relentlessly inventive style, pace, and wickedly playful humour, William The Conqueror is a musical, micro-odyssey from the mind of a kid with a penchant for daydreaming, dragged around the globe and raised by his precious records, a hippy mother’s silence and an invisible father’s addiction to booze and Bob Dylan. It announces the arrival of a fully formed novelist seething with boundless originality and vision.

On the eve of the millennium, an 18-year-old William stands at the window of a London hi-rise contemplating the death of his dreams and a stark junction between faith and oblivion. The drugs are wearing off. Reality snaps into focus one recollection at a time as he stumbles through a childhood filled with potential, wondering where responsibility for his existential misfire could lie. What he wanted was to conquer the world. What he got was a world that made no sense.