This massive novel is probably Powys's masterpiece, and it is curiously futuristic in its anticipations of today's New Age religiosity and cultism. It is also acute in its depiction of the capitalist Philip Crow and of the Communists and other social ideologues who oppose him - a dichotomy which split the world in mid-century. The religious pageant which forms the centrepiece of the book is a majestic conception, which has been justly compared with Dostoevsky. At the same time, the novel illustrates Powys's main failings - garrulity (it is well over a thousand pages long), occasional obscurity and quaintness, and passages of reach-me-down philosophising. It is, nevertheless a towering achievement which makes most 20th-century English novels look like field-mice in comparison. It is rather unfortunate that this reprint includes no preface or notes - nothing, for instance, on the libel action it provoked in the 1930s, an incident which had a deep effect on Powys and his whole career.