PUBLISHER: BLOOMSBURY
What invisible drama plays, what passes to and fro in the columns of air above them, none knows, but the disciples think: perhaps the time is arrived at last.
Aged, blind and perilously frail, John the Apostle has walked ten thousand miles to tell of love. In a hundred years he has lived to witness sights and scenes that now cloud his mind. Of his followers, there are few remaining, banished with him to an island where they wait as storm clouds whip the island with rain. They wait for the world to free them from exile. They wait for signs that seem like they will never come.
But eventually a sign does come and together the disciples leave the island. They embark on a journey that will change their lives forever: a journey filled with purpose and fear which will test their belief - in love and in each other - to breaking point, and John must face his biggest battle yet.
JOHN depicts the inner life of a man of faith and doubt with extraordinary poetic vision. Romantic, wild and passionate, this is the story of what it might be to love for a lifetime.
John is being reissued by Bloomsbury USA in January '26
An ambitious and provocative novel about the last surviving apostle and a powerful look at faith and how it lives and dies in the hearts of men.
Reviews
Themes of love, faith, redemption and survival inform his smoothly lyrical, powerfully dramatic prose in John. Williams is a writer who understands the haunting power of the simple sentence, the importance of compelling interior monologues. He has the knack of conveying a sense of immediacy. His flair for narrative overcomes the challenge of a story that starts out, by necessity, chained to a Greek rock, like Prometheus... This is a cracking good Bible-based novel for those of us who are theologically challenged. If Hollywood producer Cecil B. DeMille (The Ten Commandments) were alive today, he'd be angling for the film rights.
- Pat Donnelly, The Montreal Gazette
The writing is unfailingly resourceful and strong, able to range from the physical realities of poverty and deprivation to the exaltation of religious faith and the poignancies of memory. And the novel as a whole constitutes an eloquent and moving statement of the power of love and the belief that it will triumph in the end.
- Barry Unsworth in The Guardian
Gripping and believable... In an age where reason and science have shown themselves inadequate to fulfil the human dream of perfection, it is important that serious writers such as Williams face the perennial questions of faith and love.
- The Irish Times
