Hi, I'm Alyssa Adwarnie, and you're listening to Book of the Day.

Imagine there's a young girl in a parallel universe who is on a quest to find a missing friend.

There are talking animal friends that accompany her.

There's an evil plot that she must thwart.

An epic coming-of-age story, challenging authority, and the status quo.

If this sounds like the golden compass, well, that's because it is. It is one of the greatest fantasy books

of all time. And Sir Philip Pullman, the author behind it all, spoke with here and now host

Indira Lakshmanan. This month marks 30 years since the arrival on U.S. shores of the Golden Compass,

an award-winning British fantasy classic that's been published in dozens of countries with millions of copies sold.

Philip Pullman's story is about Lyra, a pre-adolescent girl whose ruthless and powerful parents abandoned her to be raised as an orphan inside an Oxford University College.

She lives in a parallel universe similar to our own, but populated by armored bears, angels, and witches.

It's dominated by a corrupt, all-powerful religious organization known as the

Magisterium, and a mysterious substance called dust that's essential to human life, but which the

Magisterium fears and wants to control. Every human being is born with a lifelong animal companion

known as a demon, who's their closest confidant and alter ego.

Lyra's journey to find a kidnapped friend and uncover a dark experiment to sever children

from their animal companions spawned two trilogies called his dark materials and the Book of Dust,

a movie and an HBO series that have captivated millions

of readers of all ages. I'm one of those people, so it was my very great pleasure recently to

welcome Sir Philip Pullman to here and now. I began by asking him where the idea for his heroin

Lyra came from. I don't know how I came to Lyra or she came to me. I knew the sort of story I wanted to write,

which is a long sort of, I suppose you have to call it fantasy, though I don't like that word

...