IT BEGAN WITH A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES.
Historian Diana Bishop, descended from a line of powerful witches, and long-lived vampire Matthew Clairmont have broken the laws dividing creatures. When Diana discovered a significant alchemical manuscript in the Bodleian Library,she sparked a struggle in which she became bound to Matthew. Now the fragile coexistence of witches, daemons, vampires and humans is dangerously threatened.
Seeking safety, Diana and Matthew travel back in time to London, 1590. But they soon realise that the past may not provide a haven. Reclaiming his former identity as poet and spy for Queen Elizabeth, the vampire falls back in with a group of radicals known as the School of Night. Many are unruly daemons, the creative minds of the age, including playwright Christopher Marlowe and mathematician Thomas Harriot.
Together Matthew and Diana scour Tudor London for the elusive manuscript Ashmole 782, and search for the witch who will teach Diana how to control her remarkable powers...
SHADOW OF NIGHT picks up exactly where A Discovery of Witches left off: Diana Bishop and Matthew Clairmont, a witch historian and vampire geneticist respectively, have timewalked to Elizabethan England on their hunt for a magical alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782—its sudden appearance and sudden disappearance have upended the delicately ordered world of magical creatures (witches, vampires, and daemons), threatening to unleash unprecedented metaphysical chaos.
A
CONVERSATION WITH DEBORAH HARKNESS
Q:
A Discovery of Witches debuted at # 2
on the New York Times bestseller list
with publications following in 37 countries.
What has been your reaction to the outpouring of love for A Discovery of Witches? Was it
surprising how taken fans were with Diana and Matthew’s story?
A. It has been amazing—and a bit
overwhelming. I was surprised by how quickly readers embraced two central
characters who challenge our typical notion of what a heroine or hero should
be. And I continue to be amazed whenever a new reader pops up, whether one in
the US or somewhere like Finland or Japan—to tell me how much they enjoyed
being caught up in Diana’s world.
Q: Last summer, Warner Brothers acquired screen
rights to the trilogy, and David Auburn, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer of Proof, has been tapped to pen the
screenplay. Are you looking forward to your novels being portrayed on the big
screen? What are your favorite casting
ideas that you’ve heard from friends and readers?
A. I was thrilled when Warner Brothers
wanted to translate the All Souls trilogy from book to screen. At first I was
reluctant about the whole idea of a movie, and it actually took me nearly two
years to agree to let someone try. The team at Warner Brothers impressed me
with their seriousness about the project and their commitment to the characters
and story I was trying to tell. Their decision to go with David Auburn
confirmed that my faith in them was not misplaced. As for the casting, I
deliberately don’t say anything about that! I would hate for any actor or
actress to be cast in one of these roles and feel that they didn’t have my
total support. I will say, however, that many of my readers’ ideas involve
actors who have already played a vampire and I would be very surprised if one
of them were asked to be Matthew!
Q:
SHADOW OF NIGHT opens on a scene in 1590s Elizabethan England featuring the
famous School of Night, a group of historical figures believed to be friends,
including Sir Walter Raleigh and playwright Christopher Marlowe. Why did you choose to feature these
individuals, and can we expect Diana and Matthew to meet other famous figures
from the past?
A. I wrote my master’s thesis on the
imagery surrounding Elizabeth I during the last two decades of her reign. One
of my main sources was the poem The
Shadow of Night by George Chapman—a member of this circle of fascinating
men—and that work is dedicated to a mysterious poet named Matthew Roydon about
whom we know very little. When I was first thinking about how vampires moved in
the world (and this was way back in the autumn of 2008 when I was just
beginning A Discovery of Witches) I
remembered Roydon and thought “that
is the kind of identity a vampire would have, surrounded by interesting people
but not the center of the action.” From that moment on I knew the second part
of Diana and Matthew’s story would take place among the School of Night. And
from a character standpoint, Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, George
Chapman, and the other men associated with the group are irresistible. They
were such significant, colorful presences in Elizabethan England.
Q:
In SHADOW OF NIGHT, we learn more about the alchemical bonds between Diana and
Matthew. In your day job, you are a
professor of history and science at the University of Southern California and
have focused on alchemy in your research.
What aspects of this intersection between science and magic do you hope
readers will pick up on while reading SHADOW OF NIGHT?
A. Whereas A Discovery of Witches focused on the literature and symbolism of
alchemy, in Shadow of Night I’m able
to explore some of the hands-on aspects of this ancient tradition. There is
still plenty of symbolism for Diana to think about, but in this volume we go
from abstractions and ideals to real transformation and change—which was always
my intention with the series. Just as we get to know more about how Elizabethan
men and women undertook alchemical experiments, we also get to see Matthew and
Diana’s relationship undergo the metamorphosis from new love to something more.
Q:
SHADOW OF NIGHT spans the globe, with London, France, and Prague as some of the
locales. Did you travel to these destinations for your research?
A. I did. My historical research has
been based in London for some time now, so I’ve spent long stretches of time
living in the City of London—the oldest part of the metropolis—but I had never
been to the Auvergne or Prague. I visited both places while writing the book,
and in both cases it was a bit like traveling in time to walk village lanes,
old pilgrim roads, and twisting city streets while imagining Diana and Matthew
at my side.
Q:
Did you have an idea or an outline for SHADOW OF NIGHT when you were writing A Discovery of Witches? Did the direction change once you sat
down to write it?
A. I didn’t outline either book in the
traditional sense. In both cases I knew what some of the high points were and
how the plot moved towards the conclusion, but there were some significant
changes during the revision process. This was especially true for SHADOW OF NIGHT, although most of those changes involved moving specific pieces of
the plot forward or back to improve the momentum and flow.
Q:
A Discovery of Witches begins with
Diana Bishop stumbling across a lost, enchanted manuscript called Ashmole 782
in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, whose secrets Diana and Matthew are still trying
to uncover in SHADOW OF NIGHT. You had a similar experience while you were
completing your dissertation. What was
the story behind your discovery? And how
did it inspire the creation of these novels?
A. I did discover a manuscript—not an
enchanted one, alas—in the Bodleian Library. It was a manuscript owned by Queen
Elizabeth’s astrologer, the mathematician and alchemist John Dee. In the 1570s
and 1580s he became interested in using a crystal ball to talk to angels. The
angels gave him all kinds of instructions on how to manage his life at home,
his work—they even told him to pack up his family and belongings and go to
far-away Poland and Prague. In the conversations, Dee asked the angels about a
mysterious book in his library called “the Book of Soyga” or “Aldaraia.” No one
had ever been able to find it, even though many of Dee’s other books survive in
libraries throughout the world. In the summer of 1994 I was spending time in
Oxford between finishing my doctorate and starting my first job. It was a
wonderfully creative time, since I had no deadlines to worry about and my
dissertation on Dee’s angel conversations was complete. As with most
discoveries, this discovery of a “lost” manuscript was entirely accidental. I
was looking for something else in the Bodleian’s catalogue and in the upper
corner of the page was a reference to a book called “Aldaraia.” I knew it
couldn’t be Dee’s book, but I called it up anyway. And it turned out it WAS the
book (or at least a copy of it). With the help of the Bodleian’s Keeper of Rare
Books, I located another copy in the British Library.
Q:
Are there other lost books like this in the world?
A. Absolutely! Entire books have been
written about famous lost volumes—including works by Plato, Aristotle, and
Shakespeare to name just a few. Libraries are full of such treasures, some of
them unrecognized and others simply misfiled or mislabeled. And we find lost
books outside of libraries, too. In January 2006, a completely unknown
manuscript belonging to one of the 17th century’s most prominent
scientists, Robert Hooke, was discovered when someone was having the contents
of their house valued for auction. The manuscript included minutes of early
Royal Society meetings that we presumed were lost forever.
Q:
Unlike Twilight’s Bella and Edward—hormonal teenagers who meet in the halls of
a high school—your leading characters Matthew and Diana are established
academics who meet in the library of one of the most prestigious academic
institutions in the world. This is a
world where vampires and witches drink wine together, practice yoga and discuss
philosophy. Are these characters based
on something you found missing in the fantasy genre?
A. There are a lot of adults reading
young adult books, and for good reason. Authors who specialize in the young
adult market are writing original, compelling stories that can make even the
most cynical grownups believe in magic. In writing A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES, I wanted to give adult readers a world no
less magical, no less surprising and delightful, but one that included grown-up
concerns and activities. These are not your children’s vampires and witches.
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