‘Jerusalem Commands’

Jerusalem Commands

London:  Jonathan Cape, 1992 (July 16th) hardcover with buff-coloured end-papers (see below);
original price:  £15·99;
577 pages;
I.S.B.N.:  0-224-03074-4;
cover artist:  Andrew Hirniak.

Third volume in Michael Moorcock’s most ambitious and time-consuming project, his coming to terms with the Holocaust via epic and unreliable fictional memoirs of Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski (or Colonel Pyat). Byzantium Endures (1981) and its three sequels, The Laughter Of Carthage (1984), Jerusalem Commands and The Vengeance Of Rome (2006) — sometimes referred to as the “Between The Wars” tetralogy — comprise a mammoth and astonishing journey across the first half of the twentieth century, viewed through the eyes of a master charlatan and bigot, tracing the Holocaust’s origins in the past and showing how much of society (on all sides, wittingly or otherwise) conspired in its inevitability. The sequence has been described as an authentic masterpiece of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

N.B. It should be noted that the four books’ titles form (in combination) a single sentence: ‘Byzantium endures the laughter of Carthage; Jerusalem commands the vengeance of Rome’ (q.v.).

(Preceded by The Laughter Of Carthage)

First edition
(+ book blub ed. [trade-p/b]).

London: Phoenix House trade-sized paperback, 1996 (January 2nd);
original price:  £6·99;
577 pages;
I.S.B.N.:  0-85799-187-7;
cover artist:  “blacksheep” (design).

London: Vintage trade-sized paperback, 2006 (January 5th);
original price:  £7·99;
577 pages;
I.S.B.N.:  0-099-48509-5;
cover artist/designer:  Stephen Parker.

The first edition’s buff-coloured end-papers; there was also a simultaneous, less collectable alternative binding with white end-papers.

First American & first revised edition:  Oakland, CA: PM Press trade-paperback, 2013 (June);
sub-titled “The Third Volume Of The Colonel Pyat Quartet”;
edited by Alan Kausch;
original price:  $23·00;
xiv + 480 pages;
includes ‘Introduction To Jerusalem Commands’ by Alan Wall (pp. xi–xiii);
I.S.B.N.:  978-1-68486-493-9;
cover artist:  Linda Steele (photograph)/John Yates (design).

Revision not stated; should perhaps be more accurately considered as containing minor textual amendments.

(Followed by The Vengeance Of Rome)

(Click here for Foreign Edition)

Jerusalem Commands is also available as an e-book: 9781604868692.