The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix

Paul Sussmans first novel – recalling one mans riotous account of the 20th century – is sadly also his last. The bestselling author of The Lost Army of Cambyses Last Secret of the Temple and The Labyrinth of Osiris died suddenly in 2102. He was only 45. My name is Raphael Ignatius Phoenix and I am a hundred years old or will be in ten days time in the early hours of January 1st 2000 when I kill myself Raphael Ignatius Phoenix has had enough. Born at the beginning of the 20th century he is determined to take his own life as the old millennium ends and the new one begins. But before he ends it all he wants to get his affairs in order and put the record straight and that includes making sense of his own long life a life that spanned the century. He decides to write it all down and eschewing the more usual method of pen and paper begins to record his story on the walls of the isolated castle that is his final home. Beginning with a fateful first adventure with Emily the childhood friend who would become his constant companion Raphael remembers the multitude of experiences the myriad encounters and of course the ten murders he committed along the way . . . And so begins one mans wholly unorthodox account of the twentieth century or certainly his own riotous often outrageous somewhat unreliable and undoubtedly singular interpretation of it.