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I Hear A New World

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What to expect

'Extraordinary' Susanna Clarke, bestselling author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

A continuation of The Great When; a dark and beguiling tour through the streets of London - fictional and real - by a legend of modern fantasy

It’s 1958. A time of Rock and Roll, of protest, riot and change… and London is full of danger. Dennis Knuckleyard is finally growing up, and above all he wants to leave the Great When in the past. For nine years, he’s avoided so much as thinking about the magical shadow version of London, managing even to palm off what should’ve been his last souvenir of that experience – an iron key he secretly brought back.

But while Dennis may believe he’s done with the Great When, it’s not done with him. The unsuspecting rube now in possession of the key has discovered its magical properties, bringing forth mythic, occult beings into Dennis’s London and sparking riots in the capital. Worse still, Dennis hears his first love Grace has returned to the Great When to investigate strange happenings in both cities.

Desperate to keep Grace safe and return London to normal, Dennis follows her back into the hidden city. But once it has him back, The Great When will not let him go away again so easily. He and Grace must fight to set things right or forever lose everything.

Electrifying, absurd, magical and more true than you might believe, I Hear A New World takes the reader back to Long London for a thrilling and fantastical second instalment.

Praise for The Great When: the first book in a new series by Sunday Times-bestseller and icon, Alan Moore.

'A breathless time-travelling classic. Savage, humane, comic, terrifying' Iain Sinclair

‘Brilliant and so powerfully imaginative’ Adam Curtis

'A weird book and a complete joy' Mariana Enríquez

'Extraordinary . . . very funny . . . It does what fantasy does best which is show us something beyond our experience' Susanna Clarke

Critics Review

Think Terry Pratchett writing one of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London novels – but still unmistakeably Alan. This has ‘massive hit’ written all over it
John Higgs
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
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
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, Sunday Times Bestselling author of THE BOOK EATERS
[Moore’s] lyrical style is a play of poetry and metaphor with a dash of dry humour ... This is a lavishly crafted urban fantasy tale with a caustic and colourful cast, perfect for fans of Susanna Clarke
Library Journal
What Alan Moore has done is written a powerful, imaginative and beautiful battering ram that blasts through the narrow, static vision of the world we have today. At a time when we are told there is nothing else, that this is it - now and forever - The Great When opens the door to the thrilling idea that there could be all kinds of other worlds and other possibilities. That there could be something else beyond. And he does it funny and beautifully
Adam Curtis
A masterful step from one of our very best, uncompromising storytellers; Moore peels back the layers of London and reveals not only the history we know, but the histories that could have been, and, underneath it all, both the dark and beautiful truths about who we are as a nation
Heather Parry
The worldbuilding is extraordinary and the plot is utterly gripping. Readers are sure to be sucked in
Publishers Weekly
A masterful storyteller… [Moore] turns his impressive imagination towards London.. [his] exuberant prose demands we see the magic and beauty that are intertwined with the mundane life of the city
City AM
It’s a romp, full of loving attention to the past
Sunday Times
The horror and ghastly beauty of this nether-realm are vigorously conveyed by Moore, while his evocation of the post-war capital, all bombsites, deprivation and grubby behaviour, is wonderfully immersive... a heady tumble of language, full of allusions and ripe adjectives
Financial Times
In The Great When, [Moore's] language is inflamed, a beautiful riot. Onomatopoeia, rhyming slang, wicked anachronisms, slap-happy metaphors: this is the antidote to the Ozempic prose of modern, MFA-incubated novellas
Guardian
A portent of even greater wonders yet to come
Times Literary Supplement

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