Endorsements for The Freedom of the Villainous:
"A sensuous and intellectual feast. Set mainly in 19th century France, as well as in ancient Egypt, William Rose has spun a mystery novel filled with the power of myth, identity, twinhood, love, loss and loneliness. We travel in the company of the artistic and literary greats of the 19th century: Tennyson meets Mariana. Add in time travel, mystery, good and evil and be awed at how the novel carries its major themes so fluently."
DR VALERIE SINASON, poet, retired psychoanalyst and author The Orpheus Project (Sphinx 2022) and The Professional and the Complaint: The Shadow Side of Psychotherapy (Karnac 2022)
"William Rose has done it again! This novel - a true masterpiece of literature - offers gripping depictions of remarkable characters, not only from an historical, but also from a psychological perspective. The author has crafted a truly captivating plot, in which he has blended engaging fictional personalitieswith true icons from the past, and he has written this set of tales in the most classy prose imaginable. I simply could not stop reading this book."
PROFESSOR BRETT KHAR, honorary director of research, Freud Museum London, and senior fellow, Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, London
"...this is a book written by someone with both intellectual and emotional depth and the soul of a poet. Poetry is another subject in the novel and I think we have found in Mr Rose a true modern poet who uses past worlds to spin his magic."
DONALD BUTLER, reviewing in IMAGO X
THE SYNOPSIS
'Identical twins, Mariana and Marguerite, cause fascination and disturbance in those around them. In appearance they are the same, but their personalities are strangely different.
Intertwined in their lives is the Marques de Mansura, who seems to defy time and the normal bounds of reality and whose fascination with identical twins contains the perverse wish to induce the annihilation of one twin by the other. His powerful influence and occult powers threaten to bring about this very end. For those who wish to save them, there will be a monumental struggle that will take them to Paris in the decadent 1860s, to the Tabernas Desert in Spain, and even, through an occult trick of time, Ancient Alexandria of the 2nd Century BC.
Their paths will cross with Cora Pearl, the renowned Parisian courtesan, the artists, Gustave Moreau, Gustave Doré, and the flamboyant, Félicien Rops. The poet, Alfred Tennyson, will also play a role and the twin Mariana bears an uncanny resemblance to the Mariana of his tragic poem, ‘Mariana in the South’, written before she was born. Whilst Mariana hopes for peace and solace in the desert, her twin, Marguerite, moves towards villainy as her dark, guiding star.
This novel is a striking exploration of the fascination of identical twins cleverly set across 1860s Paris, the Tabernas Desert in Spain and Ancient Alexandria.'
The three current novels by William Rose make a loose trilogy, of which this, the third published, is the prequel.
Published by Sphinx Books (imprint of Aeon Books) ISBN 13 : 9781912573820 ISBN 10 : 1912573822