New York Times Bestseller
Fierce in its imagining and stupefying in its scope Jerusalem is the tale of everything told from a vanished gutter.
In the epic novel Jerusalem Alan Moore channels both the ecstatic visions of William Blake and the theoretical physics of Albert Einstein through the hardscrabble streets and alleys of his hometown of Northampton UK. In the half a square mile of decay and demolition that was Englands Saxon capital eternity is loitering between the firetrap housing projects. Embedded in the grubby amber of the districts narrative among its saints kings prostitutes and derelicts a different kind of human time is happening a soiled simultaneity that does not differentiate between the petrol-colored puddles and the fractured dreams of those who navigate them.
Employing a kaleidoscope of literary forms and styles that ranges from brutal social realism to extravagant childrens fantasy from the modern stage drama to the extremes of science fiction Jerusalems dizzyingly rich cast of characters includes the living?? the dead?? the celestial?? and the infernal in an intricately woven tapestry that presents a vision of an absolute and timeless human reality in all of its exquisite?? comical?? and heartbreaking splendor.
In these pages lurk demons from the second-century Book of Tobit and angels with golden blood who reduce fate to a snooker tournament. Vagrants?? prostitutes?? and ghosts rub shoulders with Oliver Cromwell?? Samuel Beckett?? James Joyce??s tragic daughter Lucia?? and Buffalo Bill?? among many others. There is a conversation in the thunderstruck dome of St. Paul??s Cathedral?? childbirth on the cobblestones