JK Rowling is to publish a new children’s book, a fairy tale “about truth and the abuse of power” that she has kept in her attic for years, for free online for children in lockdown, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.
The Ickabog, which is set in an imaginary land unrelated to any of Rowling’s other works, will be serialised online from Tuesday afternoon, in 34 daily, free instalments. It will then be published as a book, ebook and audiobook in November, with Rowling’s royalties to go to projects assisting groups impacted by the pandemic.
Rowling described The Ickabog as “a story about truth and the abuse of power”. It came to her “well over a decade ago”, so she stressed that it “isn’t intended to be read as a response to anything that’s happening in the world right now”.
“The themes are timeless and could apply to any era or any country,” stressed Rowling, who has been critical in recent days of the UK government’s response to the Dominic Cummings crisis. On Monday, she wrote of Cummings’ reasoning for his contentious trip to Durham: “Your wife was ill, you thought you were infectious and you’ve got a kid. Those circumstances are not exceptional. They’re commonplace.”
Rowling has alluded to the story in the past, describing it in 2009 as a “political fairytale ... for slightly younger children” that she was then working on.
On Tuesday, the novelist said she wrote The Ickabog “in fits and starts” in between the Potter books, and initially planned to publish it after the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Instead, she went on to write adult novels including The Casual Vacancy, and The Cuckoo’s Calling under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith. She said she decided to “step away from children’s books for a while”, and kept the first draft of The Ickabog in her attic.
