Author reveals that first book in new trilogy, The Book of Dust, is bleaker than previous books and could be known as ‘His Darker Materials’

After waiting 17 years for his follow-up to the His Dark Materials trilogy, fans of Philip Pullman won’t have to wait as long next time, he revealed on Wednesday. He was speaking ahead of Thursday’s midnight launch of La Belle Sauvage, the first volume in a new trilogy, The Book of Dust, where he told press the second volume was already complete.

Speaking in the Oxford’s 17th-century Bodleian library, which itself features in his hugely anticipated – and heavily embargoed – novel, Pullman also told press that La Belle Sauvage is a darker book than its predecessors.

The Book of Dust Vol 1: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman review – worth the wait Read more

Quipping that novel, the first in The Book of Dust trilogy, should be called “His Darker Materials”, Pullman said that as an author, “I’ve got older and perhaps more cynical, closer to despair”.

“It is a darker book, I don’t deny that, but that’s the story that came to me and wanted to be told.”

La Belle Sauvage’s publication is being marked with special late openings, parties, signings and read-alongs in bookshops around the UK. It is expected to be one of the year’s biggest sellers, after it topped Amazon’s charts when it was announced in February and been tipped by booksellers to head the bestseller lists this Christmas.

The novel – which tells the story of how his heroine Lyra came to be living at Oxford’s fictional Jordan College in Northern Lights – has been awaited by fans since The Amber Spyglass was published in 2000. As well as the 11-year-old Malcolm Polstead, his daemon Asta and his canoe, La Belle Sauvage, who become Lyra’s protectors after a huge flood, Pullman also introduces a range of new characters to the story, including alethiometer specialist Dr Hannah Relf and the villainous Gerard Bonneville. Returning old favourites include Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon, her father Lord Asriel and mother Mrs Coulter, and Farder Coram.

“Lyra is a baby, and being a baby, she is not able to speak or walk, she hasn’t got very much agency, but she’s certainly at the centre of the action. Her very existence forms one of the central McGuffins of the plot,” said Pullman.

The author has described the novel as an “equel”, rather than a sequel or prequel, saying that it “doesn’t stand before or after His Dark Materials, but beside it”. On Wednesday, Pullman said that the story would take a step into the future in the next two novels of The Book of Dust trilogy, as well as sharing that he has already finished writing the second, as-yet unnamed instalment. “It continues with a big leap of time, a leap of over 20 years, so in the second we see Lyra as a 20-year-old undergraduate. In the second and third books the characters are adults, so it’s probably natural that it has a bit more of an adult tone,” he said.

Asked by a reporter from the Daily Mail how many instances of swearing there were in La Belle Sauvage, Pullman replied wryly that he didn’t know, but “perhaps we ought to have a little insert in the front saying ‘swearwords on page 456, watch out, swear word approaching next page, turn it over very quickly’”.

He was clear that, swearwords or not, the novels were open to all comers: “I don’t specify my audience. I have never wanted to do that. I’m grateful to have any audience at all,” he said, adding that he would never give an age range for readers. “I’d much rather launch it on the flood and see what happens to it.”

Pullman revealed that the book continues to tackle the question of “that mysterious and troubling substance”, dust, with the trilogy hanging on “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”.

“It’s the question of consciousness, perhaps the oldest philosophical question of all: are we matter? Or are we spirit and matter? What is consciousness if there is no spirit? Questions like that are of perennial fascination and they haven’t been solved yet, thank goodness,” he said. “I’m still very grateful that scientists have not discovered what dark matter is. I was holding my breath and crossing my fingers they wouldn’t while I was writing His Dark Materials. They still don’t know and I’m very happy about that.”

As he began to tell Lyra and Malcolm’s story, Pullman said he drew from his own experiences walking Oxford’s rivers and canals, as well as “looking at maps of the city, which is laced through and through with water”. Malcolm, who is the son of an innkeeper and set to leave school at 13, is introduced to literature by Dr Relf. “She does for him what somebody did for me, when I was 10,” said Pullman. “An old lady in the village took an interest in me and invited me to borrow books from her library. I read HG Wells and Tarzan. That was a very generous thing to do and I thought of her when I was writing about Hannah.”

The League of St Alexander he said, which recruits children to spy on their parents, neighbours and friends, draws from Soviet Russia, where children were encouraged to do the same, while Oakley Street, his version of the secret service, has a more literary source. “All I know about the secret service, I got from John le Carré – I’ve stolen it from him.”

He revealed he had particularly enjoyed writing the villainous Bonneville. “Is he a psychopath? He’s a nasty piece of work. I enjoyed him very much. There’s nothing more fun than writing about villains. I loved writing Mrs Coulter in His Dark Materials and greatly enjoyed him in this,” he said.

Just like Lyra, said Pullman, Malcolm is an ordinary child. “There’s nothing divinely gifted about them. They’re not special children. When I was a teacher, there was a Malcolm in every class and a Lyra in every class. I didn’t base them on actual children, but I based them on the notion of children that I formed during that period. Children are capable of extraordinary feats of courage, of affection and determination and I was glad to discover Malcolm wandering in my mind.”