Tolkien’s fantasy saga The Lord of the Rings, though he doesn’t particularly like the comparison.Pullman calls her “this awkward, difficult, prying, nosy, lying, greedy, untrustworthy child.” Multiple worlds abound in Pullman’s complex, philosophically rich fictional multiverse.James Daunt, managing director of Britain’s Waterstone’s book store chain, says Pullman ranks with J.K. His Dark Materials has sold more than 17.And Pullman says we will learn a lot more about the nature of Dust, a mysterious substance loathed by the religious authorities in His Dark Materials.For fans, the mischievous Lyra is one of fiction’s great child characters, up there with Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Scout Finch from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

For readers and booksellers, this is news to rival the discovery of a new Harry Potter story. on Oct. by Random House Children’s and in the U.In Lyra’s intriguingly unfamiliar world, Victorian-style technology mixes with advanced science and society is overshadowed by an oppressive religious hierarchy known as the Magisterium.In Tolkien’s Middle Earth, he says, “what’s good is good and what’s bad is bad and there isn’t very much discussion about it. Pullman says he doesn’t try to draw overt parallels with the real world, but “they are always present in my mind.”He is also often contrasted with C. “So in that sense she”s the center of the story, but she’s not actually an agent in the story.”Some critics have ranked Pullman’s trilogy alongside J.Pullman says he thinks most objections to his books come from people who haven’t read them. His Dark Materials has been pulled from some Catholic school library shelves in Canada and the United States over the years.”.S.

“Why do we vote to do something so obviously self-destructive as leaving the European Union?“I might not be writing about Donald Trump or Brexit or Nigel Farage directly in The Book of Dust,” he added, but the “questions they pose and the situations they set up are very much part of the world that I’m writing about. His Dark Materials took its title form John Milton’s biblical epic poem Paradise Lost, and Pullman’s saga has a searching spirituality running alongside its mistrust of organised religion.Yet the 70-year-old Pullman hesitates to call his books fantasy. by Penguin Random House Children’s and David Fickling Books, is likely to be one of the autumn’s biggest sellers.“I prefer to think I am writing realism,” he said.”“Why do we vote into power people who seem to have the interests of themselves and other large, powerful people in mind rather than ours?” he said.The new book begins a decade before the start of the original trilogy, but Pullman says is not a prequel.

”Global events make that a more pressing and urgent struggle than ever.”“Other books, other authors make claims and bring huge rewards, but these two imprint on everyone who calls themselves a reader,” Daunt said.Pullman has called himself an atheist, and some Christian groups have objected to his negative depiction of organized religion.Daunt said a generation of young readers “read first Harry Potter, then the complex, gripping and provocative His Dark Materials. “She’s not divinely gifted or anything like that.S.”“She’s not a special child,” he said.R. Nor is it a sequel. Pullman prefers to call it an “equel,” or companion story.Here customizable polyester Umbrella Fabric are words millions of readers have waited many years to hear: Lyra Belacqua, and her daemon, are back. She is acted upon, so to speak, by other people who are very important.S.The Book of Dust, published in the U.Published between 1995 and 2000, the first three novels Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass took Lyra from her home at Oxford University’s ancient Jordan College to the North Pole and into parallel worlds on a twisting, hazardous quest.