The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Shortlisted for Audiobook of the Year at the British Book Awards 2020.

Winner of Best Solo Narration at the New York Festival Radio Awards 2020

It is twenty years since the events of La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One unfolded and saw the baby Lyra Belacqua begin her life-changing journey.


It is almost ten years since readers left Lyra and the love of her young life, Will Parry, on a park bench in Oxford's Botanic Gardens at the end of the ground-breaking, bestselling His Dark Materials sequence.

Now, in The Secret Commonwealth, we meet Lyra Silvertongue. And she is no longer a child . . .


The second volume of Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed. Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right.

Theirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost - a city haunted by daemons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust.


The Secret Commonwealth is truly a book for our times; a powerful adventure and a thought-provoking look at what it is to understand yourself, to grow up and make sense of the world around you. This is storytelling at its very best from one of our greatest writers.

"Michael Sheen throws himself wholeheartedly into narrating this sequel to La Belle Sauvage and listeners will be rapt. For the ever-expanding international cast of characters, Sheen conjures a multitude of accents and delivers rapid-fire conversations between them. He's in step with the text at every turn; when situations become fraught or dangerous, Sheen ramps up the tension exquisitely. Thanks to Pullman's intricate storytelling and Sheen's propulsive narration, listeners will be on the edge of their seats right up to the cliff-hanger ending" AudioFile

Critics Review

  • [Pullman] has created a fantasy world, made yet more satisfying in rigour and stylistic elegance. This is a book for getting older with

    Guardian, Book of the Week
  • The Secret Commonwealth is ablaze with light and life. The writing is exquisite; every sentence sings … To read Pullman is to experience the world refreshed, aglow, in Technicolour

    Independent
  • Lyra is all grown up in a rich, vivid sequel

    Telegraph
  • Engrossing

    Financial Times
  • Pullman’s story is still thought-provoking … This book elegantly weaves in live issues, from Europe’s refugee crisis to facts in the post-truth era. And Pullman’s prose is rewarding as ever

    The Times
  • The novel gallops forward, full of danger, delight and surprise. Nearly miraculous, it seems, is Pullman’s ability to sketch character, place and motive in just a few lines

    New Statesman

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