The Book of Dust

The Book of Dust is a forthcoming trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman. It is a companion trilogy to the His Dark Materials trilogy. The first book is set 10 years before Northern Lights and centres on Lyra Belacqua, one of the protagonists of the original trilogy. Alethiometers, dæmons and the Magisterium also return, alongside new characters, including a new hero.

Pullman conceived The Book of Dust before the publication of Lyra's Oxford in 2003, but took more than a decade to write it. The first novel in the trilogy will be published in October 2017.

Pullman conceived of The Book of Dust before the publication of Lyra's Oxford in 2003, but had not begun writing it at that time. In a message on his website in April 2005, he wrote that the book was "under way". In 2007, he described it as "a big, big book." In a 2009 interview with Oxford University newspaper Cherwell, Pullman stated that The Book of Dust was "growing" but that he was "encountering complexities that seem to be making it longer than I thought it would be." In 2011, Pullman said that he was considering writing The Book of Dust in two volumes, one set before His Dark Materials and the other set afterwards. In September 2012, Pullman told the BBC that The Book Of Dust was now his focus and that he had written 220 pages. In December, he told Wired that he had cleared "the whole of [2013] and most of the year after" to write the book. Pullman was still working on the book as of May 2016 and vowed to not cut his hair until it was complete.

On 14 February 2017, Pullman announced that The Book of Dust would be a new trilogy, with the first book set ten years before the events of the original His Dark Materials trilogy, and the other two ten years after the original trilogy. The books will be jointly published on 19 October 2017 by Random House Children’s and David Fickling Books in the United Kingdom and by Random House Children's Books in the US. The following day, The Guardian confirmed the announcement and gave some further details of the story.