Seventeen years after his famed "His Dark Materials" trilogy, best-selling British author Philip Pullman is back with another three-book series, the first volume of which will hit the stands this October.
The title of the first volume of "The Book of Dust" is "La Belle Sauvage", which will be published simultaneously on October 19 by Penguin Random House Children's and David Fickling Books in the UK, and Random House Children's Books in the US.
"I know from their letters and tweets that my readers have been waiting patiently (mostly) for 'The Book of Dust' for a long time. I've been writing it for several years, and I've been very parsimonious with information about it. It gives me great pleasure and some excitement at last to satisfy their curiosity (and mine) about this book," says the 71- year-old author.
"The Book of Dust" will return to the parallel world that has enthralled readers young and old alike, the publishers say.
"La Belle Sauvage" is set 10 years before "Northern Lights", the first book of "His Dark Materials" trilogy, and centres on the much-beloved Lyra Belacqua. Alethiometers, daemons, and the Magisterium all return to play their part.
"Lyra is at the centre of the story. Events involving her open the first chapter, and will close the last. I've always wanted to tell the story of how Lyra came to be living at Jordan College and, in thinking about it, I discovered a long story that began when she was a baby and will end when she's grown up," says Pullman.
This volume and the next will cover two parts of Lyra's life: starting at the beginning of her story and returning to her 20 years later.
On the title, Pullman says, "Who or what is 'La Belle Sauvage'? She is a boat, a canoe to be precise, and her owner is a boy, Malcolm Polstead, the hero of this story whom we have seen in an earlier part of Lyra's story. The canoe is important in this part of 'The Book of Dust', because some of the story is set during a massive flood."
He terms "The Book of Dust" as neither a prequel nor a sequel but an 'equel'.
"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.
Also, of course, there are some characters who are new to us, including an ordinary boy (a boy we have seen in an earlier part of Lyra's story, if we were paying attention) who, with Lyra, is caught up in a terrifying adventure that takes him into a new world," he says.
"When I wrote the first book of 'His Dark Materials' - sometimes called 'Northern Lights', sometimes called 'The Golden Compass' - I certainly didn't anticipate that so many people would find Lyra as interesting a character as I did," Pullman goes on to say.
Published between 1995 and 2000, Pullman's spellbinding "His Dark Materials" trilogy is widely regarded as a modern classic that has captivated readers for over 20 years and won acclaim at every turn.
Its heroine, Lyra, frequently tops polls as an all-time favourite character, and the series is praised as one of the best.
Individually, the three books of "His Dark Materials" - "Northern Lights", "The Subtle Knife", and "The Amber Spyglass" - have won several literary prizes, among them the Carnegie Medal (1996) and the "Carnegie of Carnegies" (2007) and the first Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year Award to be given to a children's novel (2001).
The books have been adapted for stage and screen countless times.
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