Philip Pullman

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Philip Pullman in April 2005

Sir Philip Pullman CBE (born October 19, 1946 in Norwich , Great Britain ) is a British writer .

biography

Pullman spent his childhood in Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe -, Australia , London and Wales . He studied English at Exeter College in Oxford and was later a teacher at a middle school, then a professor of literature at Westminster College in Oxford, where he still lives today. He is married and has two children.

Pullman became famous for his trilogy His Dark Materials . The title His Dark Materials was taken from John Milton's Paradise Lost , which was a great inspiration for Pullman. According to him, he wanted to turn the story around and regretted that this work was rarely read in schools and universities in England. In the introduction to the English edition, he quotes a comment by William Blake on Paradise Lost :

“The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it

"The reason Milton wrote in shackles when he wrote about angels and God, and in freedom when he wrote about devil and hell, is that he was a true poet and the devil's party without knowing it."

- Philip Pullman

As a Spiegel reviewer put it on the occasion of the film premiere of The Golden Compass in 2007, “Philip Pullmann's novel series' His Dark Materials', to which 'The Golden Compass' belongs, is generally regarded as a latently humanistic alternative to CS Lewis ' Christian redemption - and revival mission in the land of Narnia . "

Pullman is an official supporter of the British Humanist Association , a British association promoting humanism . Pullman also takes an active part in the public debate about ways out of the climate crisis . He is a co-signer of an open letter published in December 2018, in which politicians are accused of having failed in addressing the crisis and are called on to join movements like Extinction Rebellion and to refrain from consumption .

In November 2019, the television series His Dark Materials , which is based on his literary source, began broadcasting.

Works (selection)

Series

Sally Lockhart

  • The Ruby in the Smoke (1985)
  • The Shadow in the North / The Shadow in the Plate (1986)
  • The Tiger in the Well (1990)
  • The Tin Princess (1994) (Eng. The banner of the red eagle)

His Dark Materials

  • Northern Lights (UK) / The Golden Compass (USA) - HDM I (1995) (German: Der Goldene Kompass)
  • The Subtle Knife - HDM II (1997) (Eng. The Magic Knife)
  • The Amber Spyglass - HDM III (2000) (Eng. The Amber Telescope)
  • Lyra's Oxford - HDM (2003) (German Lyras Oxford)
  • Once Upon a Time in the North - HDM (2008)
The Golden Compass

In a world that is very similar to ours, Lyra lives with her “dæmon” (a manifestation of her own soul in animal form) Pantalaimon at Jordan College. Just as her uncle Lord Asriel returns from the north to present visions of parallel worlds to the ruling church, more and more children are disappearing in the area. There are terrible rumors about the kidnappers - they are supposed to snatch their daemons from the children. Lyra's friend Roger is also among the disappeared. She desperately wants to find him and travel north, but there is also the mysterious and fascinating Mrs. Coulter. She promises to take Lyra with her to the north. And then there is this strange alethiometer that the principal gave Lyra and that he said, if read correctly, it always told the truth. Lyra gets more and more between the fronts and finally sets off to travel north.

The magic knife

After Lyra moved to another world in the north, she meets Will, who is closed. He wants to save his father, who is a polar explorer, at all costs. They also learn that there are an infinite number of parallel worlds and that gates to other worlds can only be opened with the help of an inestimably valuable tool: the magic knife.

The amber telescope

In the finale of the trilogy, Lyra and Will must rise into the world of the dead to pay off an old debt. Lyra wants to beg Roger's forgiveness. In doing so, they have to overcome terrible things. The ghosts, those terrible shadows that destroy the dæmons of men, threaten to gain power over them. And they want to gain a knowledge that they can only find there. Meanwhile, the Almighty are preparing for an all-important battle against Lord Asriel and his comrades-in-arms. And then there's Mrs. Coulter, who until the end you don't know which side she's really on. In addition, Lyra has yet to fulfill the witches' prophecy. Mary Malone, a scientist who also studied dust, will play an important role in this. Will and Lyra also have to jump over their own shadow.

The Book of Dust

The forthcoming Book of Dust trilogy takes place in the same series universe as His Dark Materials and spans chronologically. So far, part one has appeared in German translation as “Über den wilden Fluss”, which is scheduled before the His Dark Materials (HDM) trilogy. The German translation of “The Secret Commonwealth” will be published by Carlsen Verlag in March 2020 under the title “To the other end of the world”. This novel is set to take place 20 years after part one of the trilogy and seven years after part three of HDM.

  1. La Belle Sauvage (UK) - BoD I (2017) (Ger. Across the wild river).
  2. The Secret Commonwealth (UK) - (2019)

Contemporary novels

  • The Broken Bridge (1990)
  • The White Mercedes / The Butterfly Tattoo (1992) (fatal misunderstandings)

Children's books

  • Count Karlstein / The Ride of the Demon Huntsman (1982) (German Count Karlstein)
  • The Firework-Maker's Daughter (1995)
  • Clockwork / All Wound Up (1996) (German: The Iron Heart)
  • I what a advice! (1999) (Eng. I was a rat)
  • The Scarecrow and his Servant (2004) (eng. The adventures of the Baron von Krähenschreck)
  • with illustrations by Lorenzo Mattotti : Aladin and the magic lamp , German by Marina Tichy. Aladin Verlag, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-8489-2041-9 .

Other novels

Non-fiction

  • Ancient Civilizations (1978)

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. Give the sea monkey sugar. In: Spiegel online . December 5, 2007.
  2. ^ Philip Pullman CBE. Author and distinguished supporter of Humanism, born 1946. In: "British Humanist Association". 2010, accessed on December 24, 2010 : “What I fear and deplore in the 'faith school' camp is their desire to close argument down and put some things beyond question or debate. It's vital to get clear in young minds what is a faith position and what is not - so that, for instance, they won't be taken in by religious people claiming that science is a faith position no different in kind from Christianity. Science is not a matter of faith, and too many people are being allowed to get away with claiming that it is, and that my 'belief' in evolution is a thing of the same kind as their 'belief' in miracles. What we need in schools, really, is basic philosophy. "
  3. Act now to prevent an environmental catastrophe. The Guardian, December 9, 2018, accessed January 22, 2019 .
  4. https://www.carlsen.de/amazon-mobi/his-dark-materials-4-ans-andere-ende-der-welt/97877

Web links