Once Upon a Time in the North
Once Upon A Time in the North's front cover
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| Author | Philip Pullman |
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| Cover artist | John Lawrence |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy short story |
| Publisher | David Fickling Books, Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers |
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Publication date
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United Kingdom: 3 April 2008 United States: 22 April 2008 Australia: 1 May 2008 |
| Media type | Hardback |
| Pages | 104 |
| ISBN | |
| Followed by | Northern Lights |
Once Upon a Time in the North, a fantasy novella by Philip Pullman (first published on 3 April 2008 in the United Kingdom) functions as a prequel to Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. The premise of the story involves the meeting of Iorek Byrnison and Lee Scoresby — an incident originally expected to appear in The Book of Dust:
I've just finished a short book which will be coming out next spring, probably March or April in this country. It's called Once Upon A Time in the North, and it's about Lee and Iorek. When we see them for the first time with Lyra, Lee is not that old; he's fifty, sixty, something like that, so they know each other for a long time. But I wanted to write a story when they first met as they were young, and I've just written it. I'm making a little book like Lyra's Oxford with extra-bits. I've just been working on it, on a game, a game-board. It's going to be part of that book.
Pullman has remarked that in addition to Once Upon a Time in the North and The Book of Dust, a small green book about Will may appear some day:
Lyra's Oxford was a dark red book. Once Upon a Time in the North will be a dark blue book. There still remains a green book. And that will be Will's book. Eventually...
The Guardian carried an "exclusive" extract from the book under the heading Winds of Chance on 22 March 2008.
The book launch took place on 31 March in Oxford during the Oxford Literary Festival. Over 700 fans massed in Oxford Town Hall to hear Philip Pullman speak to Today programme presenter James Naughtie about his new novella.
Lee Scoresby, a 24-year-old young Texan aeronaut, and his dæmon, the jackrabbit Hester, make a rough landing in Novy Odense, a harbour town on an island in the White Sea, in Muscovy. After paying for the storage of their balloon, Lee and Hester make their way into town, where Lee notes with surprise the presence of bears: some working, some just loitering about. He enters a bar to get something to eat and drink, and falls into conversation with a local journalist, Oskar Siggurdson, who explains that an election for Mayor of Novy Odense will take place later in the week. Siggurdson tells Lee that the overwhelming favourite — not the incumbent mayor, but a man called Ivan Dimitrovich Poliakov — has as a central policy a campaign to deal with the bears which hang around the town. Oskar mentions that the bears, once a proud race, now rank as "worthless vagrants". Lee learns with amazement that these bears are intelligent, can speak, and make and wear their own armour, though laws make it illegal for the bears to wear their armour in Novy Odense. At this point Lee intervenes in a conflict elsewhere in the bar, preventing the barkeeper from beating a drunk Dutch captain called van Breda, who has a ship tied up in the harbour but does not have permission to load his cargo and leave. Lee and van Breda get thrown out of the bar.
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