3 Review(s)

I'm the King of the Castle is Susan Hill's spellbinding novel of childhood cruelty. With an introduction by Esther Freud. Susan Hill's I'm King of the Castle was first published in 1970. Telling the story of two boys forced to live together by their widowed parents, it is a chilling portrayal of childhood cruelty and persecution, of parental blindness and of our own ambivalence to what are supposed to be the happiest days of our lives. "Hill's exploration of a juvenile ghoul and his natural prey is a brilliant tour de force". (Guardian). "Equalled for poignancy and horror only in Lord of the Flies". (Sunday Telegraph). Susan Hill's novels include Strange Meeting, The Woman in Black, and Mrs de Winter, a sequel to Du Maurier's Rebecca. She is also well known for her children's books (including Can It Be True?, which won the Smarties Prize). She has written non-fiction and autobiography and is a regular broadcaster and reviewer. She is married to the Shakespeare scholar Stanely Wells, and they live in a Gloucestershire village from which she runs a small publishing company called Long Barn Books. You can see her website.