The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two
  • Published: 3 October 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241379356
  • Imprint: Penguin and David Fickling Books
  • Format: Audio CD
  • RRP: $38.00

The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two

From the world of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials - now a major BBC series

Formats & editions
Paperback
29 Sep 2020
Audio CD
3 Oct 2019
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Master storyteller Philip Pullman continues the incredible journey of Lyra Silvertongue in the second volume of The Book of Dust

It is twenty years since the events of La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One unfolded and saw the baby Lyra Belacqua begin her life-changing journey.

It is seven years since readers left Lyra and the love of her young life, Will Parry, on a park bench in Oxford's Botanic Gardens at the end of the ground-breaking, bestselling His Dark Materials sequence.

Now, in The Secret Commonwealth, we meet Lyra Silvertongue. And she is no longer a child . . .


The second volume of Sir Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed. Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right.

Theirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost - a city haunted by daemons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust.


The Secret Commonwealth is truly a book for our times; a powerful adventure and a thought-provoking look at what it is to understand yourself, to grow up and make sense of the world around you. This is storytelling at its very best from one of our greatest writers.
  • Published: 3 October 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241379356
  • Imprint: Penguin and David Fickling Books
  • Format: Audio CD
  • RRP: $38.00
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About the authors

Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman was born in Norwich and educated in England, Zimbabwe, Australia and Wales. He studied English at Exeter College, Oxford.

His first children's book, Count Karlstein, was published in 1982. To date, he has published thirty-three books, read by children and adults alike. His most famous work is the His Dark Materials trilogy. These books have been honoured by several prizes including the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Book Prize, and (for The Amber Spyglass) the Whitbread Book of the Year Award - the first time that prize had been given to a children's book. Pullman has received numerous other awards, including the Eleanor Farjeon Award and the Astrid Lindgren Award. He was knighted in the 2019 New Year's Honours List for Services to Literature.

portrait photo of Philip Pullman

Christopher Wormell

Chris Wormell is a self-taught artist, and the winner of the Ragazza Prize at Bologna in 1991. Two Frogs won the Nestlé Bronze Award, Molly and the Night Monster was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal and One Smart Fish won the Booktrust Early Years Awards Best Picture Book. His books include George and the Dragon and The Big Ugly Monster and the Little Stone Rabbit which was recently adapted into a stage play. Chris lives in North London with his wife and children.

portrait photo of Christopher Wormell

Praise for The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two

REVIEWS FOR LA BELLE SAUVAGE: THE BOOK OF DUST VOLUME ONE: Fans of His Dark Materials will find themselves joyfully immersed in a familiar world . . . meanwhile, awaiting first-time readers is all the pleasure of commencing their own journey into this most captivating of universes at the very beginning of Lyra's story

Independent

No one else writes like Pullman . . . entirely worth the 17-year wait

Imogen Russell Williams, Metro

A rich, imaginative, vividly characterised rite-of-passage tale

Nicolette Jones, The Sunday Times

High-octane adventure accompanies ingenious plotting

The Times

[Pullman] has created a fantasy world, made yet more satisfying in rigour and stylistic elegance. This is a book for getting older with

Guardian, Book of the Week

The Secret Commonwealth is ablaze with light and life. The writing is exquisite; every sentence sings ... To read Pullman is to experience the world refreshed, aglow, in Technicolour

Independent

Pullman's story is still thought-provoking ... This book elegantly weaves in live issues, from Europe's refugee crisis to facts in the post-truth era. And Pullman's prose is rewarding as ever

The Times

A long, taxing, complex journey, laced with beauty, terror and philosophy

Metro

As ever, Pullman's story is complex and vast but home to some of the finest storytelling in the 21st century. Revel in whole new worlds and enjoy one of literature's most wonderful heroines before she comes to HBO and the BBC

Stylist

Pullman is confronting readers with the horrors of our own world reflected back at us. In The Secret Commonwealth he creates a fearful symmetry

The Herald

The novel gallops forward, full of danger, delight and surprise. Nearly miraculous, it seems, is Pullman's ability to sketch character, place and motive in just a few lines

New Statesman

Engrossing

Financial Times

Pullman has created a fantasy world, made yet more satisfying in this new volume. This is a book for getting older with

Guardian

Lyra is all grown up in a rich, vivid sequel

Telegraph