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Disorder #6
Will Williams
In the modern retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's 'William Wilson' by the author of 'The Old drift,' a young black man's paranoia escalates as he is followed, challenged, and terrorized by a doppelgänger bent on sabotaging his life.
Ever since high school, somebody's been playing the echo game on Will Williams. A look-alike with the same tattoos and the same name has been following him. Starting by implicating Will in petty crimes, and escalating to offenses with serious prison terms, he's undermined every attempt Will has made to get his life on track. Now, drifting from city to city, Will's doing everything in his power to outrun his shadow.
Will Williams is part of Disorder, a collection of six short stories of living nightmares, chilling visions, and uncanny imagination that explore a world losing its balance in terrifying ways. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single disorienting sitting.
©2019 Namwali Serpell (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Ever since high school, somebody's been playing the echo game on Will Williams. A look-alike with the same tattoos and the same name has been following him. Starting by implicating Will in petty crimes, and escalating to offenses with serious prison terms, he's undermined every attempt Will has made to get his life on track. Now, drifting from city to city, Will's doing everything in his power to outrun his shadow.
Will Williams is part of Disorder, a collection of six short stories of living nightmares, chilling visions, and uncanny imagination that explore a world losing its balance in terrifying ways. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single disorienting sitting.
©2019 Namwali Serpell (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
23 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 27, 2019
362 people are currently reading
661 people want to read
About the author
Namwali Serpell
24 books723 followersNAMWALI SERPELL is a Zambian writer who teaches at UC Berkeley. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award in 2011 and was selected for the Africa 39 in 2014. She won the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing.
THE OLD DRIFT is her first novel. The chapter entitled "The Falls" is derived from The Autobiography of An Old Drifter, by the historical figure, Percy M. Clark (1874-1937).
THE OLD DRIFT is her first novel. The chapter entitled "The Falls" is derived from The Autobiography of An Old Drifter, by the historical figure, Percy M. Clark (1874-1937).
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March 8, 2024
Two Black Men - Harold Smith, 2020
"You have conquered, and I yield. Yet henceforward art thou also dead -- dead to the world and its hopes. In me didst thou exist -- and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself."
The above quote from Edgar Allan Poe's William Wilson, the great author's classic tale of a doppelgänger.
Namwali Serpell does a masterful job in adapting Poe's themes in her short story, Will Williams. Masterful on many levels, beginning with voice. As Poe has a wealthy English nobleman educated at Eton and Oxford narrate his tale, so Namwali has a poor Black man from the inner city narrate her story.
Right from the get-go, as we listen in to Will Williams relate back to his grueling school days, there's no doubt Nawali catches the rhythms and raw language of Will's speech, the pathos of Will's inner spirit as the tough high schooler shucks and jives, postures and punches his way in a world where so much is stacked against him.
And, man, on top of all the usual shit everyone poor and black like him has to deal with, things like being forced to go to a school where teachers act like jailers and rats crawl in the ceiling and the walls, there's something unique to him alone - another dude with his same tattoos and his same name keeps following him around.
Damn! What does that other Will Williams want with him? Who is this cat that he keeps egging him on, setting traps, challenging him to fight? And it doesn't stop, it doesn't stop!
No, as in the Poe tale, it doesn't stop - right through school, then through juvenile jail, then in the pen - ah, for years! - then from city to city, from New Orleans to Miami to Detroit - it doesn't stop. Will Williams is always there for Will Williams.
Namwali Serpell's tale is so worth it. Does Namwali upstage Edgar in casting Will Williams, the double, the doppelgänger, as not only a second personal self but also a second larger self that's as large as an entire city, an entire hostile society? You'll have to read and judge for yourself.
Available on audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/Will-Willi...
Born in Zambia and educated in the United States, Namwali Serpell currently teaches at University of California, Berkeley
March 9, 2022
What a great retelling. Interesting and how much the voice coarsed him into bad choices so easily was intriguing. One of my favorites in the Disorder collection.
December 24, 2025
“In the end, the Game plays you.”
I got chills multiples times. The narrator gives the sense that he’s not making bad choices, but is doing his best to survive in horrible circumstances. He is loveable and kind. But he gets sent to prison. He confronts his inner demons. He confronts himself. There are lots of psychological passages that are very memorable. This was chilling, and very masterfully tied together thematically. A climactic and memorable ending. Serpell slayed with this. 5 stars for Will Williams.
I got chills multiples times. The narrator gives the sense that he’s not making bad choices, but is doing his best to survive in horrible circumstances. He is loveable and kind. But he gets sent to prison. He confronts his inner demons. He confronts himself. There are lots of psychological passages that are very memorable. This was chilling, and very masterfully tied together thematically. A climactic and memorable ending. Serpell slayed with this. 5 stars for Will Williams.
November 17, 2022
Ewww. Just, what a disappointment.
That’s time I’ll never get back…the story sounded good, but then you read it and you just cringe the entire time. Not worth even the short amount of time it takes to read this.
That’s time I’ll never get back…the story sounded good, but then you read it and you just cringe the entire time. Not worth even the short amount of time it takes to read this.
May 14, 2020
'Will Williams' is an ingenious reworking of Edgar Allan Poe's 'William Wilson'. Like the original, it's about a man who is shadowed throughout his life by a hoarse-voiced, troublemaking doppelgänger. But Serpell makes her Will a young black man from a disadvantaged background, whose descent into crime is all too easily encouraged by those around him. The effect of the sinister double is palpably tragic, and I found the story so striking and effective that I can see it being turned into a film. It's a worthy equal to Poe's story.
Read as part of the Amazon Original Stories Disorder collection.
TinyLetter
Read as part of the Amazon Original Stories Disorder collection.
TinyLetter
March 16, 2024
A commendable retelling of the Poe original. The main character is a habitual criminal from his youth, but I could not help having enormous sympathy for this poor man with what was going on in his mind. It is not clear what is actually happening - is there a supernatural presence, or is he experiencing a mental health illness? Either way, he goes through torture.
The last in the Disorder series, and one of my favourites.
The last in the Disorder series, and one of my favourites.
May 5, 2024
A strong sense of feeling and presence. The lingo of the protagonist Will Williams was done to perfection. I could picture the man, his looks, voice and all in an instant.
The second of Serpell’s books I’ve read. This one much shorter than the mammoth, ‘The Old Drift’ that I rated 5 stars, and almost as good. I’m oblivious to the original piece that this was retelling, so I won’t go into that.
Will Williams is his own worst enemy. He can’t seem to shake himself off ;), and lands himself in trouble time after time. Just when his prospects are looking good, he’ll screw it up. But what to blame? Your upbringing? The incarcerated anti-legacy of your family? The drugs? The up-to-no-good? Certainly not yourself. He claims not to remember how sh*t went down. And yet he says he wasn’t arrested for the real sh*t he did done.
It was a short story. But one that transported me there immediately. A fantastic job well done on the characterisation. An easy plot for the brain-boiled like me. And also, not a bit similar to her debut novel, ‘The Old Drift’, which speaks loudly to the range and talent of this author. I’ve been meaning to read more from Serpell once my geography challenge was done and dusted, and I’m happy for it.
The second of Serpell’s books I’ve read. This one much shorter than the mammoth, ‘The Old Drift’ that I rated 5 stars, and almost as good. I’m oblivious to the original piece that this was retelling, so I won’t go into that.
Will Williams is his own worst enemy. He can’t seem to shake himself off ;), and lands himself in trouble time after time. Just when his prospects are looking good, he’ll screw it up. But what to blame? Your upbringing? The incarcerated anti-legacy of your family? The drugs? The up-to-no-good? Certainly not yourself. He claims not to remember how sh*t went down. And yet he says he wasn’t arrested for the real sh*t he did done.
It was a short story. But one that transported me there immediately. A fantastic job well done on the characterisation. An easy plot for the brain-boiled like me. And also, not a bit similar to her debut novel, ‘The Old Drift’, which speaks loudly to the range and talent of this author. I’ve been meaning to read more from Serpell once my geography challenge was done and dusted, and I’m happy for it.
February 2, 2024
Truly terrible. What a disappointing ending to the Disorder series, which really had its highs and lows.
April 2, 2024
My rating 3⭐️⭐️⭐️ weird .. but all these stories are!!
This is the 6th in the Disorder Collection… it wasn’t bad … very strange but this whole collection is strange.
This is the 6th in the Disorder Collection… it wasn’t bad … very strange but this whole collection is strange.
January 8, 2020
Another novella forming part of the Disorder collection, which explores a world losing its balance. I listened to this one and the narrator, JD Jackson, did a phenomenal job and took the experience to a whole other level.
People either seem to love or hate this short, and I think this is because it depends on how you interpret the story. I don't mind the ending being open, but would have liked this one to be a bit longer.
I have read The Old Drift by same author and she can definitely write!
People either seem to love or hate this short, and I think this is because it depends on how you interpret the story. I don't mind the ending being open, but would have liked this one to be a bit longer.
I have read The Old Drift by same author and she can definitely write!
April 15, 2024
Doppelgänger
Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook edition (June 27, 2019)
I've read some good reviews recently about the Disorder series and realized that I hadn't finished reading all 6 stories myself, although there had been a few good ones and only one dud. So I circled back to catch Will Williams. It was unfortunately another dud. It took Edgar Allan Poe's story of a doppelgänger who haunts their namesake and transplants it from Poe's early 19th century England setting to a gangsta setting in America. It was cringe throughout with multiple uses of the n word and "feel me?" on almost every page. The various setups (various confrontations and fights) and the conclusion are almost identical except for the changed locales.
Will Williams is the 6th of 6 short stories/novellas in the Amazon Original Disorder Series. “Stories that get inside your head. From small-town witch hunts to mass incarceration to exploitations of the flesh, this chilling collection of twisted short stories imagines the horrors of a modern world not unlike our own.”
Trivia and Links
Edgar Allan Poe's William Wilson (1839*) is in the Public Domain and can be read online at various sources. An excellent location is the annotated version at PoeStories.com which you can read here.
Footnote
* For some unexplained reason PoeStories.com lists 1842 as the year of publication for William Wilson. Goodreads has it as January 1839. The story first appeared in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in October 1839 and was then collected in Tales Of The Grotesque and Arabesque (1840).
Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook edition (June 27, 2019)
I would fain have them believe that I have been, in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control. - excerpt from William Wilson (1839*) by Edgar Allan Poe, used as the epigraph for Will Williams.
I've read some good reviews recently about the Disorder series and realized that I hadn't finished reading all 6 stories myself, although there had been a few good ones and only one dud. So I circled back to catch Will Williams. It was unfortunately another dud. It took Edgar Allan Poe's story of a doppelgänger who haunts their namesake and transplants it from Poe's early 19th century England setting to a gangsta setting in America. It was cringe throughout with multiple uses of the n word and "feel me?" on almost every page. The various setups (various confrontations and fights) and the conclusion are almost identical except for the changed locales.
Will Williams is the 6th of 6 short stories/novellas in the Amazon Original Disorder Series. “Stories that get inside your head. From small-town witch hunts to mass incarceration to exploitations of the flesh, this chilling collection of twisted short stories imagines the horrors of a modern world not unlike our own.”
Trivia and Links
Edgar Allan Poe's William Wilson (1839*) is in the Public Domain and can be read online at various sources. An excellent location is the annotated version at PoeStories.com which you can read here.
Footnote
* For some unexplained reason PoeStories.com lists 1842 as the year of publication for William Wilson. Goodreads has it as January 1839. The story first appeared in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in October 1839 and was then collected in Tales Of The Grotesque and Arabesque (1840).
September 11, 2020
I enjoyed this. Now I have to find the Poe story on which it is based.
July 5, 2019
*Read for free with Kindle Unlimited and Audible for the audiobook*
My favorite of the bunch so far:)
Quotes:
Williams. Will Williams. Yeah, you can call me that. My real name brought me a whole lotta trouble in my life, blowing in and outta all of these yappety lips, soured up with lies. I’m not that man, and that name is dead to me. There ain’t nothing left to gain, me holding on to it in here, that’s for damn sure. My time’s up. I just don’t want to depart this earth with misunderstandings on me, you feel me?
I don’t wanna talk about what all I did—all that darkness. Everybody knows and it ain’t worth the breath. What I wanna tell you is how it started. Most niggas get hard slowly, bit by bit. But for me, it was like I gave up all the good in me at once. Just stripped it off and dropped it on the floor. I did petty shit at first, like we all do when we’re young and raw. But really and truly the devil entered my life one day. You know, you look back on it. And you see that something stepped in. Right. There.
Gritty and slightly creepy at times.
Narrator: 4.5 stars
Story/plot: 4.5 stars
My favorite of the bunch so far:)
Quotes:
Williams. Will Williams. Yeah, you can call me that. My real name brought me a whole lotta trouble in my life, blowing in and outta all of these yappety lips, soured up with lies. I’m not that man, and that name is dead to me. There ain’t nothing left to gain, me holding on to it in here, that’s for damn sure. My time’s up. I just don’t want to depart this earth with misunderstandings on me, you feel me?
I don’t wanna talk about what all I did—all that darkness. Everybody knows and it ain’t worth the breath. What I wanna tell you is how it started. Most niggas get hard slowly, bit by bit. But for me, it was like I gave up all the good in me at once. Just stripped it off and dropped it on the floor. I did petty shit at first, like we all do when we’re young and raw. But really and truly the devil entered my life one day. You know, you look back on it. And you see that something stepped in. Right. There.
Gritty and slightly creepy at times.
Narrator: 4.5 stars
Story/plot: 4.5 stars
April 27, 2022
Donr waste your time
May 20, 2023
A fantastic short story that had me hooked from start to finish! I look forward to reading more of the author’s work.
January 2, 2020
A really fantastic short story- sort of mind bendy. I was questioning what was going on the whole time, and the ending, IIRC, was really powerful. The audio was perfect.
April 9, 2020
Modern retelling of Poe's William Wilson (I wasn't aware of this and so had to look it up), evil doppelganger or split personality disorder, or something more sinister, you decide.
August 25, 2025
This is the last book in the disorder collection, I enjoyed this modernised retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's William Wilson
I've recently been getting into Kindle Unlimited's collection of stories and it's safe to say they've become a favourite to read, discovering new authors and reads will never get old for me
I've recently been getting into Kindle Unlimited's collection of stories and it's safe to say they've become a favourite to read, discovering new authors and reads will never get old for me
May 21, 2022
This was so good I just purchased the author’s debut novel from 2019
July 12, 2019
Free kindle book and audiobook for Amazon Prime members.
Narration: while I don’t listen to audiobooks often, I can enjoy them. This one was a 2.5/5
Plot: this is a retelling of an Edgar Allen Poe story. However it is much too short and unexplained. 2/5
2/5. What? Interesting but more like a prequel than a story in my opinion.
Narration: while I don’t listen to audiobooks often, I can enjoy them. This one was a 2.5/5
Plot: this is a retelling of an Edgar Allen Poe story. However it is much too short and unexplained. 2/5
2/5. What? Interesting but more like a prequel than a story in my opinion.
July 3, 2019
Interesting modern day twist to this story. Will's life and mind are in a disturbed state as he described troubles that has him in present predicament. Good read
March 3, 2025
Rubbish. This series started off strong but got worse and worse. Do not read.
July 11, 2019
This retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's William Wilson was an interesting read and I have to say, Namwali Serpell did a superb job re-imagining this. As a Poe-junkie, I really appreciated this.
Great ending to a really interesting Amazon collection. I love these and I definitely found some new authors to check out.
Great ending to a really interesting Amazon collection. I love these and I definitely found some new authors to check out.
July 30, 2019
I think many of the short stories in this collection are misunderstood. This is another one I've come across that was wonderfully written and thought provoking, yet a lot of people don't seem to get the point. I could be off base because I never read the original by Edgar Allan Poe, but to me it seems that the main character is suffering from some sort of mental disorder and does not realize that the doppelganger he blames for all of his problems, doesn't actually exist. I thought it was a clever idea and the writing kept me interested.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 2, 2019
Wow - a thought-provoking story
I’ve never been inside that world. But after reading this short story, I have a tiny glimpse into one man’s mind and realize many of us have destructive triggers. For whatever reason, we’re suddenly on the other side of a conflict, wondering how things got so out of control. Are we the victim? Could we really be who they say we are?
I’ve never been inside that world. But after reading this short story, I have a tiny glimpse into one man’s mind and realize many of us have destructive triggers. For whatever reason, we’re suddenly on the other side of a conflict, wondering how things got so out of control. Are we the victim? Could we really be who they say we are?
September 1, 2021
This tale of a doppelganger is actually a doppelganger of a story, William Wilson, by Edgar Allan Poe. It fell rather flat for me because I had not read the original. Things may be different had I done so.
November 30, 2019
Enjoyed this
September 22, 2022
The third of three stories I listened to today, and the strongest. I fell in love with Namwali Serpell's writing in The Old Drift, though that novel did suffer from being kind of endless and wandering. A short story from Serpell is a dream, then: all the virtuosity, none of the meandering.
Will Williams is one of the six stories in Amazon's "Disorder" collection, which you can read and listen to for free with Prime. This collection reminds me of Black Mirror: short, standalone forays into creepy shit going down.
The premise of this particular story is this: "In a modern retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s William Wilson, a young black man’s paranoia escalates as he is followed, challenged, and terrorized by a doppelgänger bent on sabotaging his life." Okay I had no idea until just now that this was a retelling of an EAP story, now I have to go back and read the original. You don't really need to know anything other than that premise. The story is hair-raising, and in spite of it being a retelling, it's unique. The main character, who seems like a character straight out of The Wire, is sympathetic but highly, highly unreliable (or is he?). I was kept hooked until the end, the ending made me break out in goosebumps, and I paced around the house until I was done. (It's only 42 minutes so it didn't take long.) The narrator, JD Jackson, is excellent. I'll be looking for more of his work, and Serpell's.
p.s. In case you're thinking, "It's cheating to count short stories as books," blame Goodreads for setting it up that way and also I've consumed enough 700-page books to average things out. :)
Will Williams is one of the six stories in Amazon's "Disorder" collection, which you can read and listen to for free with Prime. This collection reminds me of Black Mirror: short, standalone forays into creepy shit going down.
The premise of this particular story is this: "In a modern retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s William Wilson, a young black man’s paranoia escalates as he is followed, challenged, and terrorized by a doppelgänger bent on sabotaging his life." Okay I had no idea until just now that this was a retelling of an EAP story, now I have to go back and read the original. You don't really need to know anything other than that premise. The story is hair-raising, and in spite of it being a retelling, it's unique. The main character, who seems like a character straight out of The Wire, is sympathetic but highly, highly unreliable (or is he?). I was kept hooked until the end, the ending made me break out in goosebumps, and I paced around the house until I was done. (It's only 42 minutes so it didn't take long.) The narrator, JD Jackson, is excellent. I'll be looking for more of his work, and Serpell's.
p.s. In case you're thinking, "It's cheating to count short stories as books," blame Goodreads for setting it up that way and also I've consumed enough 700-page books to average things out. :)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 174 reviews