Puneet Varma (Editor)

Jerusalem (Moore novel)

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Language
  
English

Media type
  
Hardcover

Originally published
  
September 2016

Page count
  
1,266


Set in
  
Northampton, England

Pages
  
1266

Author
  
Alan Moore

ISBN
  
978-0-86166-252-4

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Publishers
  
Knockabout Comics (UK), Liveright Publishing Corporation (US)

Similar
  
Works by Alan Moore, Other books

Jerusalem is a novel by British author Alan Moore, wholly set in and around the author's home town of Northampton, England. Combining elements of historical and supernatural fiction and drawing on a range of writing styles, the author describes it as a work of "genetic mythology". Published in 2016, Jerusalem took a decade to write. At the time of publication it was one of the 10 longest novels written in the English language. The novel is divided into three Books, "The Boroughs", "Mansoul", and "Vernall's Inquest".

Contents

Overview

The story develops over centuries, set in the Boroughs, the most ancient neighbourhood in Northampton. The colophon states that the book is based on a true story; it concerns a large collection of characters: some mythical, some fictional, and some historical. Along with his family's oral traditions, life experience, and ideas (such as eternalism) that he had explored in other writings, Moore's research sources included a collection of interviews entitled “In Living Memory — Life in ‘The Boroughs,’” published by the Northampton Arts Development in 1987, as well as old Kelly's directories.

A key narrative arc culminates in 2006 with an exhibit of paintings by one of the characters, Alma Warren — indicated by the author portrait and its caption, present on the book's jacket, to be a stand-in for Moore. Several events in the story are retold with different characters as the focaliser, with the writing style adapted to the focal character's inner voice, in a way that unites otherwise disconnected narrative threads. The book includes chapters in the style of Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, as well as a chapter written in verse, while the entire second Book is somewhat in the style of a children's novel (a "savage, hallucinating Enid Blyton," according Moore in a 2008 interview with the BBC).

The novel's title is a reference to And did those feet in ancient time by William Blake, which was set to music and given the title "Jerusalem" by Hubert Parry. Prominent themes include "poverty, wealth, history, the evolution of English as a visionary language" as well as "madness, ghosts, and the confusion of dreams, visions, memories, and premonitions."

Editions

The UK and US editions differ: the Knockabout edition is 1180 pages long and is set in a small point size, whereas the Liveright edition is set in a larger point size and consequently is 1266 pages long, and features a different author photo on the jacket. Alongside the one-volume hardcover first edition, Jerusalem was simultaneously released in a 3-volume slipcased paperback edition, and as an unabridged audio book narrated by Simon Vance, published by Recorded Books, Inc. The front cover (or, respectively, the slipcover for the 3-volume paperback edition) depicts several key scenes and characters from the novel in the form of a diorama. Each of the three Books begins with an epigram and photographic illustration (comprising cover illustrations for the slipcased volumes).

References

Jerusalem (Moore novel) Wikipedia