Philip Pullman has ended years of speculation by announcing that The Book of Dust, his epic fantasy trilogy, which will stand alongside his bestselling series, His Dark Materials, will be published in October around the world. Set to come out on October 19, the as yet untitled first volume of The Book of Dust will be set in London and Oxford, with the action running parallel to the His Dark Materials trilogy.
A global bestseller when the first volume, Northern Lights, was published in 1995, Pullman’s series has sold more than 17.5 million copies and has been translated into 40 languages.
Pullman’s brave and outspoken heroine Lyra Belacqua will return in the first two volumes. Featuring two periods of her life - as a baby and 20 years after His Dark Materials ended - the series will also include characters familiar to existing readers, as well other Pullman creations, including alethiometers (a clock-like truth-telling device), daemons (animals that are physical manifestations of the human spirit) and the Magisterium, the Church-like totalitarian authority that rules Lyra’s world.
Announcing the new books, the Oxford-based former teacher said he returned to the world of Lyra because he wanted to get to the bottom of “Dust”, the mysterious and troubling substance at the centre of the original books.
“Little by little through that story the idea of what Dust was became clearer and clearer, but I always wanted to return to it and discover more,” Pullman said.
In a description that will resonate with the current political climate, he added that “at the centre of The Book of Dust is the struggle between a despotic and totalitarian organisation, which wants to stifle speculation and enquiry, and those who believe thought and speech should be free.”
But David Fickling, whose firm, David Fickling Books, will publish The Book of Dust in the UK jointly with Penguin Random House children’s books, warned readers not to draw too many parallels between the new book and the current political situation in the UK or US.
“I think it is a really important book for now, but not in an intellectual way, but in a storytelling way,” he told the Guardian. Adding that the book would “resonate on a psychological level”, he explained: “Some of the best people for telling us the truth about our times are our great storytellers and Philip is one of them.”
Exact details of the plot are being kept a closely guarded secret, as is whether Pullman has already finished all three volumes. However, Fickling hinted that readers would not have to wait 17 years - the gap between between the last volume of His Dark Materials and the first of The Book of Dust - before the new series would conclude.
Asked when the second volume would be published, he replied, laughing: “You need to ask him, but readers should know they have a big treat ahead of them.”
How Lyra came to be living at Jordan College in Oxford in her alternate universe, initiated the new trilogy. “In thinking about it, I discovered a long story that began when she was a baby and will end when she’s grown up,” Pullman said.
Describing it as neither sequel or prequel, but an “equel”, he added: “It doesn’t stand before or after His Dark Materials, but beside it. It’s a different story, but there are settings that readers of His Dark Materials will recognise and characters they’ve met before.”
Dust, as described in the original series, has been equated to dark matter. It is expected that Pullman will incorporate the latest findings about the substance, which scientists say exists because of evidence of its gravitational impact on the motion of visible matter. Though Pullman’s publisher would not confirm how this research would feature in the book, Fickling admitted that it had some influence.
“He has a capacious mind and is sent nearly every scientific book before publication,” he said. “If you visit his house, you will see all these books that are way above everyone else, he doesn’t miss much that is going on.”
The quest to understand, use and destroy Dust is central to His Dark Materials. But as well as being analogous to dark matter, Pullman has said that it is a metaphor for the original story, which he based upon Milton’s Paradise Lost.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd.
