“High John the Conqueror” is the title of Jim Younger’s debut novel. The setting is London, but not as we know it. The English King has converted to Catholicism, and has handed his throne to his brother, now known as Andy One. Meanwhile, America has been brought down by a series of incompetent and corrupt president, and so sickened are the Americans by this, that they invite Andy One to resume sovereignty over America. But times are turbulent in England also, as the Christian Coalition Socialists have been toppled in a coup. Chief of the Flagellants, High John the Conqueror (whose real name is Organ McWhinny), leads the survivors underground. To avoid being sentenced to death, High John fakes his own death and disappears.  However, he’s been so successful at this that Lingus, his teenaged son, is convinced that he is dead… With no mother to protect him either, Lingus takes to the streets… Jim Younger first started on the novel in 1985. The title comes from a 1954 Muddy Waters cover of Willie Dixon’s “Hoochie Coochie Man”, where Muddy added an additional verse that mentions “John the Conqueroo”. Jim Younger is a musician, so he originally wanted to make “High John the Conqueror” a fake Louisiana fiddle tune, but he never got around to finishing the tune. To find out more about the author, you must visit our Jim Younger page.

 

Jim Younger is not the first to given a novel this title, as John W. Wilson’s novel “High John the Conqueror” was published in 1948. According to Wikipedia, the original “High John the Conqueror” was an African prince sold to the Americas as a slave, whose spirit was never broken by his captivity, and has survived in folklore as a trickster figure, due to the tricks he used to play to evade his masters. Zora Neale Hurston also wrote about “High John de Conqueror” in her collection “The Sanctified Church”. “John the Conqueror” is also a name give to a root that resembles a black man’s genitals when dried, and is thus used in hoodoo sexual rituals for this reason.

 

Read our Jim Younger interview

 

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