Time Magazine on The Golden Compass

Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007

Sympathy for the Devil

By Lev Grossman

At 61, Philip Pullman is tall and handsome and pink-faced in that way that older Englishmen often are. His conversation easily ranges from theoretical physics to the work of John Milton. He's like one of those wise, stern-but-humorous uncles usually played in movies by Michael Caine or Jim Broadbent. He doesn't look particularly satanic. But then again, neither, probably, does Satan.

Pullman is the author of His Dark Materials, a trio of fantasy novels that has sold more than 15 million copies since the first volume, The Golden Compass, was published in 1995. It has been turned into a radio drama and a hit London stage play. A movie of The Golden Compass, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, opens in the U.S. next week and will probably take its place in the pantheon of profitable fantasy franchises that includes The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter. But the most striking fact about Pullman's work is that his characters aren't fighting Sauron or the White Queen or Voldemort. Their enemy is the Christian church.

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