The Great When - (Long London) by Alan Moore (Hardcover)

About the Book

From the New York Times bestselling author and legendary storyteller Alan Moore, the first book in an enthralling new series about murder, magic, and madness set between two Londons-one recovering from World War II, and one a secret world unlike any other.

"Extraordinary . . . very funny . . . It does what fantasy does best which is show us something beyond our experience." -Susanna Clarke, New York Times bestselling author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Book Synopsis

From the New York Times bestselling author and legendary storyteller Alan Moore, the first book in an enthralling new series about murder, magic, and madness set between two Londons-one recovering from World War II, and one a secret world unlike any other.

"Extraordinary . . . very funny . . . It does what fantasy does best which is show us something beyond our experience." -Susanna Clarke, New York Times bestselling author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

In 1949, amidst the smog of London, Dennis Knuckleyard, a hapless eighteen year-old employed by a second-hand bookshop, discovers a novel that simply does not exist. It is a fictitious book, one only existing within another novel. Yet it is physically there in his hands. How?

Dennis has stumbled on a book from the Great When, a magical version of London beyond time and space, where reality blurs with fiction and concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous, terrible beings. But this other, magical London must remain a secret: if Dennis cannot find a way to return this book to where it belongs, he risks facing gruesome and grave repercussions.

So begins a journey delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers - some from legend, some frighteningly real, and all with plans of their own. Soon Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may alter and endanger both Londons forever . . .

Review Quotes

"Moore is a wizardly prose stylist whose sentences flow in a Joycean stream . . . If you're looking for a writer to ensorcell you in a saga of hard-boiled crime and surrealist horror, here is your magus." --The Wall Street Journal

"Extraordinary . . . very funny . . . It does what fantasy does best which is show us something beyond our experience." --Susanna Clarke, New York Times bestselling author of PIRANESI and JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL

"The worldbuilding is extraordinary and the plot is utterly gripping. Readers are sure to be sucked in." --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"The Great When is a corker . . . Moore is entirely in charge here, confident and witty and pulling us along. The Great When is the first book in The Long London Quintet. If you read it, that fact will make you very happy indeed." --Parade

"[A] wondrous and polyphonic adventure . . . Maximalism is *in* again, folks: strap in and have yourself a blast." --Electric Literature

"Like Dickens, Alan Moore has us waiting on the dock, impatient for the next installment of his breathless, time-travelling classic. A preternaturally convincing hallucination from London's fetid past transports us, in some mysterious way, over the abyss of our impoverished post-digital present. Savage, humane, comic, terrifying: and that's just the first page. Now read on." --Iain Sinclair

"A profound, gorgeous novel of secret magics and lost souls." --Sunyi Dean, USA Today bestselling author of THE BOOK EATERS

"Alan Moore is a visionary artist and a myth maker, and in The Great When he delivers the mystical core of the occult tradition of London: a fantasy novel that features Arthur Machen, Austin Osman Spare, an alternative world that is more real than ours, bookstores, crime and a city traumatized by the war. And he does this with fun, with challenging and beautiful writing, with delight and with the knowledge that there are portals and only a few can access them. This is a weird book and it's a complete joy." --Mariana Enríquez, author of OUR SHARE OF NIGHT

"The Great When, a book with a keen sense of the uncanny, has a pleasant lightness." --The New York Times Book Review

"Moore constructs a world that blurs the lines between the seen and unseen, tethering his vision to both historical touchstones and a magickal alternate dimension. This is not just a story; it is also an act of literary alchemy that challenges readers to question the realities they take for granted-and to revel in the shadow world of their own imaginations." --Los Angeles Review of Books

"Moore makes the parochial universal, the mundane sublime and the temporal never-ending." --Financial Times

"A rollicking adventure." --Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2024, Part Two

"Moore's latest is a love letter to the city of London, full of small ironies and nods to the history and character of its neighborhoods as well as its resilience post-WWII." --Booklist

"A wildly kinetic and entertaining adventure . . . as well as a kind of postwar coming-of-age tale for its young protagonist and his spirited companion." --Locus Magazine

"In his expansive and ambitious new novel, The Great When, Alan Moore pens a love letter to art, literature and London that's sure to capture readers' imaginations . . . He illuminates every little detail of a London reeling from the end of the war, and his joy in doing so is palpable; this book is as much a celebration of our London as it is the creation of a new one. Characters are so vividly rendered that you can practically see them in full-color illustrations . . . Readers seeking big ideas and colorful splashes of language will love exploring The Great When-and look forward to future entries in the Long London series." --BookPage

"[The Great When] - about a parallel London that must never be revealed - is straightforward, yet as effectively moody as you might expect from author Alan Moore, best known for his benchmark comics Watchmen and V For Vendetta." --The Chicago Tribune

"A time-travelling epic from the mighty Moore? Yes please." --New Scientist

"Exactly the type of hyperreal historical fantasy you would expect from Alan Moore's fertile imagination. It is also just the first installment in what is being billed as the Long London Quintet. I cannot wait to see what happens next." --BookReporter.com

"Will Moore's fans love it? Absolutely." --Los Angeles Times

"The book is written with keen wit and an exacting eye . . . an enjoyable frolic." --New York Journal of Books

"Dark, sordid, gritty, thrilling, and gorgeous in its own peculiar way." --Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"This is Alan Moore in full-on psychogeologist mode, envisioning deep time-with its glowering, mesmerizing violence-beneath the surface of everything that masquerades as the present day . . . A sustained feat of bravura brilliance. Bring on the next instalment." --Guardian

"Moore is arguably one of the greatest British authors of our time, and this first visit of a proposed five-part series into the magical, romantic, absurd, fantastical world of "Long London" shows him at his best. The depth of description, use of language and his ability to conjure rich characters inhabiting detailed worlds is amongst the best out there." --Newsweek

"Bolstered by the lyrical loveliness of Moore's uninhibited prose, The Great When unravels as a darkly humorous, intricate mystery in a fantasy world that may very well come to life when you open it up." --Sci-fi Now

"Propulsively paced and engaging . . . Moore sprinkles touches of literary magic, descriptive jewels of colloquy, through his tale that elicits such a sense of immersion in the world he has sculpted. . . these bursts of gloriously imaginative language mark his writing out as so distinctive and lend his storytelling such color." --Buzz Magazine

"Magisterial . . . burns with fierce intelligence and wit . . . [Moore's] idiosyncratic use of language, with modernist gestures, is a marvel . . . [This is] fantasy at its very best." --The Bookseller

"I'm not sure there's a God, but I thank Her for Alan Moore." --Entertainment Weekly

"One of the most significant fiction writers in English . . . Moore's influence can be felt everywhere-in our literature, on our screens, in our politics." --The Guardian

"[Moore's] lyrical style is a play of poetry and metaphor with a dash of dry humor . . . This is a lavishly crafted urban fantasy tale with a caustic and colorful cast, perfect for fans of Susanna Clarke." --Library Journal

"Original, exceptional, extraordinary, and a simply riveting read from start to finish . . . Will hold immense appeal for fans of adventure packed 'alternate universe' style science fiction where the real world and fantasy world are deftly intertwined." --Midwest Book Review

About the Author