The Golden Compass

Categories: Books & Authors | Books | Entertainment
    • Author: Philip Pullman
    • Published in 1995
    • UK Title: Northern Lights
    • Awarded the 1995 Carnegie Medal for children's fiction
    • Voted among the best of Carnegie Medal winners of the past 70 years
    • Name "His Dark Materials" taken from a line in Milton's Paradise Lost

  • The Golden Compass is the first volume in Philip Pullman's fantasy series, His Dark Materials. In 2007, the book was adapted into a film by director Chris Weitz.

  • Summary

    The "His Dark Materials" trilogy takes place in an alternate reality resembling our own, in which an authoritarian "Magisterium" attempts to cover up the truth about a magical substance of immense power, known as "Dust." In The Golden Compass, young Lyra Belacqua and her daemon (a spirit-animal bound to her biologically) must travel to the icy North to thwart the Church's plans to kidnap and experiment on other children. Along the way, she encounters a variety of mysterious creatures, including the armored polar bear Iorek Byrnison, the evil Magisterium administrator Mrs. Coulter and the witch queen Serafina Pekkala.

  • Controversy

    By Pullman's own admission, the His Dark Materials trilogy deals with religious themes in a subversive way, embracing humanism and rejecting what he perceives as the authoritarian control of religious authority. (He has referred to the books as being "about killing God.")

    Though a self-described agnostic, Pullman openly rejects the Christian view of God, and depicts the "Church" in his books as a somewhat sinister organization seeking to control the general population through ignorance and fear. It has been suggested that the books may be intended not as an attack on Christianity itself, but of the use of Christianity to oppress.

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