coming in FEB 2024, for sale at selected shops and on this website

from the forward:

''Nicolas Grey’s artwork is steeped in the influence of the underground cartoonists of the seventies and eighties, all hand-crafted Expressionism and crosshatch, so different from the slick digital wizardry that dominates the 21st century comics scene. His drawings of the grubbiest, ugliest locales achieve a strange beauty because they’re so well rendered. Every tawdry indignity is dignified by his pen. Soho comes across like the eerie ruins of some ancient English Heritage site.

When, exactly, is Death Of A Pornographer set? By the time we meet Jerome, he’s middle-aged, and his shop’s stock includes DVDs. Starbucks has come, the streets are infested with “boutique cunts”, and Jerome pines for the days when Soho was “run properly” by gangsters and old-timers like his dad. In a dream-like narrative that slips surreally between past and present, we see our anti-hero arriving in the seventies as a fluffy-haired youngster, learning the ropes, and gradually being bound securely in place. Defiantly defending the haven that Soho used to be, Jerome nevertheless inches towards the realisation that he must escape its clutches.

This book is not for everyone, obviously. The claustrophobic jostle of dildos, inflatable dolls, penis enlargers and wank magazines constantly threatens to overshadow the gentle, chaste romance that develops between Jerome and his poledancing friend from Kosovo. But for those who can see past the sordidness, there is compassion here, and humanity, and the inspirational allure of art that elevates everything in its labour of love. "'

Michel Faber