Of his magnum opus, Cortázar said, laconically, “I’ve remained on the side of the questions.” But it was the novel’s formal daring-its branching paths-that hinted at what was to be the Argentine author’s most persistent and most personal inquiry: Why should there be only one reality?
Both reading modes follow the world-weary antihero Horacio Oliveira, Cortázar’s proxy protagonist, who is disenchanted with the tepid certainties of bourgeois life, and whose metaphysical explorations form the scaffolding of a billowing, richly comic existential caper. Famously, it includes an introductory “table of instructions”: “This book consists of many books,” Cortázar writes in it, “but two books above all.” The first version is read traditionally, from chapter one straight through the second version begins at chapter seventy-three, and snakes through a non-linear sequence. The epic story Pullman tells is not only a spellbinding adventure featuring armoured polar bears, magical devices, witches and daemons, it is also an audacious and profound re-imagining of Milton’s Paradise Lost.Īn utterly entrancing blend of metaphysical speculation and bravura storytelling, HIS DARK MATERIALS is a monumental and enduring achievement.“What good is a writer if he can’t destroy literature?” The question comes from Julio Cortázar’s landmark 1963 novel Hopscotch, the dense, elusive, streetwise masterpiece that doubles as a High Modernist choose-your-own-adventure game. As Lyra learns the truth about her parents and her prophesied destiny, the two young people are caught up in a war against celestial powers that ranges across many worlds and leads to a thrilling conclusion in The Amber Spyglass. In The Subtle Knife she is joined on her journey by Will, a boy who possesses a knife that can cut windows between worlds. Lyra’s search for a kidnapped friend uncovers a sinister plot involving stolen children and turns into a quest to understand a mysterious phenomenon called Dust.
Northern Lights introduces Lyra, an orphan, who lives in a parallel universe in which science, theology and magic are entwined.
In his award-winning fantasy trilogy, HIS DARK MATERIALS, Philip Pullman invents a richly detailed and marvellously imagined world that is complex and thought-provoking enough to enthral readers of all ages.
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