Image: Author J.K. Rowling poses for a portrait while publicizing her adult fiction book “The Casual Vacancy” at Lincoln Center in New York October 16, 2012. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/Files
LONDON (Reuters) – Fans of “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling are in for a treat this week when her digital publisher website Pottermore releases a series of four pieces of writing about wizardry entitled “History of Magic in North America”.
The writings, posted at 1400 GMT each day from Tuesday to Friday, are meant to set the scene for the highly anticipated “Harry Potter” spin-off movie called “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”, which is due for release in November.
Tuesday’s offering, entitled “Fourteenth Century – Seventeenth Century”, takes readers “back through the centuries to reveal the beginnings of the North American magical community and how witches and wizards used magic before they adopted wands,” Pottermore said.
Wednesday’s piece will look at “the dangers faced by witches and wizards in the New World” and Thursday’s will reveal “why the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA) took steps to move the magical community deeper underground”.
Friday will take readers to the “Roaring Twenties”, when the new movie “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” starring Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne is due to begin.
“These stories will give you some idea of how the wizarding world on this continent evolved over the years, and of the names and events that lay the foundation for the arrival of ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’,” Pottermore told Rowling fans.
In the movie Redmayne plays “magizoologist” Newt Scamander, “who stops in New York following his travels to find and document magical creatures”, according to Warner Bros.
A “magizoologist”, in Rowling’s make-believe universe, is somebody who studies magical creatures.
The story is set in 1926 – decades before Rowling’s fictional boy wizard Harry Potter begins his adventures at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The film, based on Rowling’s “Harry Potter” accompanying volume “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”, marks the best-selling author’s screen writing debut.
(Reporting By Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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