THE GREAT EASTERN
The Great Eastern is a sprawling, lavish anticolonial adventure novel, set in the 1850s-1870s in New York, London, Paris, India, and the North Atlantic. Pitted against each other: the two great 19th-century anti-heroes, Captain Nemo and Captain Ahab – one who lives beneath the waves and hates everything upon them, one who lives upon the waves and hates everything beneath. Caught in between: the very real-life Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the preeminent civil engineer of Victorian England, here kidnapped, pressed into service to build Nemo his submarine, then to join him in his battle against the modern world.
LATE-BREAKING NEWS
• The audiobook version of The Great Eastern, from Penguin Random House, read by the Audie-winning Peter Noble, is out now! Here’s a preview:
• A discussion of The Great Eastern was featured in the 2021 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. You can learn more, and watch the video, on our Media page.
• Keegan-Michael Key strikes again! After lavishing praise on The Great Eastern in The New York Times (see below), he weighed in some more in People magazine:
• Some lovely acclaim for The Great Eastern in The New York Times! In his year-end Top Ten list, Keegan-Michael Key says “I read a book right on the edge of Covid. It’s a piece of historical fiction called The Great Eastern, and it’s fantastic. There was a civil engineer in the 19th century in England by the name Isambard Kingdom Brunel. And he helped build the tunnel underneath the Thames, and he did all this in the 1850s, 1860s. A ship called the Great Eastern suffered from an explosion. That’s all historical fact. But Howard Rodman, the author, what he did is you find out it was actually a terrorist attack. A gentleman blew up the ship, and then kidnapped Brunel. And you find out, through the story, that the person who kidnapped him is Captain Nemo. It’s great. It’s been my favorite read of the year so far.”
• As if that weren’t enough, Keegan-Michael Key gave another shout-out to The Great Eastern in People magazine, describing the novel as “a fantastic adventure with characters from literary history and a real civil engineer who lived in 19th-century England.”
• Author Howard A. Rodman received USC’s 2020 Associates Award for Artistic Expression, “the highest honor the University bestows on its members for significant artistic impact,” citing The Great Eastern. Livestream here on October 22, 2020 at 5pm.
• You can read about Rodman, The Great Eastern, the Associates Award, and more, here.
• The Great Eastern is featured on the year-end list of The Dime Library, whose Matthew Kerns writes, “This book is fabulous. The characters, the story, and especially the language. There were passages that were near Nabokovian… And what a story!… It isn’t just a good book, it is a particularly readable one… I really can’t strongly enough suggest that you read this book. You deserve a great read, don’t you?“
• For Herman Melville‘s 200th birthday on August 1, author Howard A. Rodman wrote a tribute to one of the lions of American letters, whose Moby-Dick inspired The Great Eastern and so much else. Read it here.
• Also on August 1 — serendipity! — Howard A. Rodman discussed The Great Eastern with Michael Silverblatt, host of KCRW’s Bookworm. Enjoy Silverblatt’s unique insights and Rodman’s equally unique perspective on the book. Listen to it here.
• Leonard Maltin says, “nothing Rodman has done could have prepared me for The Great Eastern, his glorious and expansive new novel… I loved spending the better part of a week immersed in this singular book.” Read Maltin’s full review here.
• Brian Evenson‘s review of The Great Eastern in The Los Angeles Review of Books is now up! Says Evenson: “The Great Eastern is a pastiche in the best postmodern sense: it’s intense, invigorating, and faithful to the originals while still breaking new ground. It is, as well, rigorous in its use of 19th-century language and attitudes. Even with its combination of actual events, fictional characters, and slightly altered history, it’s more convincing than most historical novels. Ultimately, The Great Eastern reads like a sprawling 19th-century novel that rollicks with the sense of adventure and mystery that so informs Verne’s best work. It is an engaging tale, a kind of return to what adventurous literature used to be that never loses sight of where literature — and its most complex, unforgettable characters — can still go.” Read the entire review here.
• An interview with the author of The Great Eastern, entitled “Gleeful Abandonment of Restraint,” can be found here.
• The Great Eastern has been selected as one of “The Summer’s Best Books: Stuff Your Beach Bag with These Compulsive Reads” by the Toronto Globe and Mail.
• Jay Gabler of The Tangential reviews The Great Eastern: “If you’re the kind of steampunk who wears a striped tank suit and a monocle on vacation, this is the beach read for you… A rich, ripping yarn.”
• Lovely reader reviews for The Great Eastern on Amazon: “B
• First UK review for The Great Eastern: “A cornucopia of contrivance and creativity that revels in mingling history and science with flights of fancy, whim and whimsy to stunning effect. You will be surprised and then seduced by this novel, and by the end you will have been royally treated to a festival of fun.” The review continues, “This is a novel that should have a wide appeal, certainly not the preserve of steam punk enthusiasts alone, it will delight nineteenth century adventure buffs and lovers of perfectly executed pastiche too. The prose has a rhythm that is almost sing song and fizzes. Turn a page and meet a new adventure. This is a party on the page.” It concludes, “This is a fantasy that cleverly opens up our understanding of the age it is set in. I will have nothing but warm, fond memories of The Great Eastern.” Read the full review from the literary quarterly NB here.
• Hear author Howard A. Rodman discuss The Great Eastern and more on the Liar’s Club Oddcast.
• The Great Eastern has received its first review! Says John Huff, “I would say great American novel but The Great Eastern is more than that. It’s world class. Pantheon literature.” He adds, “This is a midnight oil read. It’s beautiful and it hurts.” Read the full review here.
• The Hammer Museum launch event, featuring a wondrous conversation between cultural critic Virginia Heffernan and The Great Eastern author Howard A. Rodman, was captured on video, and can be found here for your viewing pleasure.
• You can now find The Great Eastern on Goodreads. A reader praises the book’s “outrageous linguistic brio” and adds, “I could not read fast enough.”
• A Spotify playlist of music from and inspired by The Great Eastern can be found here. And a catalogue raisonné for that playlist, giving explication for each and every song — why it was included, what it evokes — can be found here.
• The Great Eastern has been optioned for a feature film, and author Howard A. Rodman has been hired to adapt.
ADVANCE PRAISE
“The novel The Great Eastern is the ultimate confluence of the nineteenth century, its technological advances, anti-heroes, and crimes. Howard Rodman’s swashbuckling adventure pits Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab against Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo in a very real struggle for the future. Rodman weaves his sly picaresque around the actual story of the British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the century’s greatest ship, and its mission to lay down the Transatlantic cable forever linking the great colonial powers of the time.”
–Walter Mosley
“An absolutely ingenious premise propels this audacious adventure into surprising and thrilling territory, where history twists and braids itself like the transatlantic cable at the heart of this epic narrative. Howard Rodman’s powers of invention, connective synthesis, and grim humor are matched only by his literary ventriloquism and psychological insight. Seems to me this kaleidoscopic tall tale is a ready-made binge-read!”
–Steven Soderbergh
“A weird and wondrous adventure, chock full of rich, commanding prose detailing the clash between arrogant geniuses of considerable ego, and the historical ripples such a clash imparts. Reminiscent in all the best ways of Robert McCammon’s Matthew Corbett books.”
–Chuck Wendig
“Three cheers for Howard Rodman’s ripping steampunk adventure, The Great Eastern! Outrageous linguistic brio gives pleasure line by line, while the story, an epic battle between two 19th century archvillians–Captain Nemo and Captain Ahab–keeps the pages flying. A tour de force fantasy where science meets human obsession.”
–Janet Fitch
“Howard Rodman’s The Great Eastern is a book of confabulations, real and imagined. Surprises on every page. A splendid and notable achievement.”
–Ricky Jay
“Seriously, this is the sort of thing that readers of China Mieville or Alan Moore or Eleanor Catton should gobble up (it also has hints of my beloved George MacDonald Fraser, but I realize that’s not a name anyone throws around anymore). A historical phantasmagoria and ripping adventure done as a game of hide-and-seek. It’s like twelve of your favorite movies at once, in full sensurround.”
–Jonathan Lethem
“For anyone with a weakness for Herman Melville, Jules Verne, 19th century nautical hijinx, or just a helluva great story, The Great Eastern is for you.”
–Jake Gyllenhaal
“Here be port of embarkation for the SS Rodman as it sets sail above and below the waves of modern imagination. First mate Melville is in the crow’s nest, eyes full of blue sky and white monsters, and navigator Verne is submerged in deep whirlpools of the teardrop hull no seafarer has plumbed. Not another scrivener alive or dead but Rodman – lyrical and witty, erudite and passionate, dare we say rapturous, dare we say obsessed – could have charted let alone helmed this singular, exhilarating flying-dutchman of an epic.”
–Steve Erickson
“Wildly inventive and richly imagined historical fiction that mashes up fact with the fantastic to create a singular, original reading experience. I loved it.”
–Mark Haskell Smith