JK Rowling’s latest book bears striking similarities to her own public controversy, though the author denies the plot was drawn from her own experiences.
the Harry Potter The 57-year-old author writes the Cormoran Strike mystery books under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, and in the sixth installment in the series. The black ink heartNow, the investigation surrounds Edie Ledwell, the co-creator of a popular cartoon who is “being hunted by a mysterious figure online who goes by the pseudonym Anomia,” according to an official synopsis.
Rolling Stone reported that Edie’s character is considered racist, capable, and transphobic by online viewers and sees her internet fame upended, facing death threats before actually being killed. Strike and private detective Robin Ellacott then try to solve the murder.
Rowling, whose most recent fantastic beasts film opened with the lowest box office earnings of the Potter franchise to date, she came under fire in June 2020 when she appeared to support anti-transgender sentiments in a series of tweets. Although she denied that her views on feminism are transphobic, she doubled down on her controversial views in a lengthy essay shared on her website days after her.
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Potter Actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint have spoken out against Rowling’s much-criticized comments about the transgender community. Rowling said that she refused to be part of HBO Max Potter reunion special that premiered in December, but walked the red carpet to Fantastic Beasts: Dumbledore’s Secrets at the end of March.
In a question-and-answer session on her website, Rowling said her latest book is not based on the online criticism and attacks she faced for her views.
“I have never created a book, and this book was certainly not created from my own experience, you know, in order to talk about my own life. That does not mean, of course, that your own life experience is not t in the book,” he said, adding that he had been “planning this book for so long and then a couple of things that happen in this book have happened to me since.”
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“I would like to make it very clear that I have not written this book as a response to anything that has happened to me,” Rowling said. “Although I have to say when it happened to me, those who had already read the book in manuscript form were [like,] ‘Are you clairvoyant?’ It wasn’t clairvoyant…it was just one of those weird twists.”
“Sometimes life imitates art more than one would like,” he said.
Rowling added: “If I were to write about my experience as a creator, it would look very different. And I have to say, for example, I think it will be a question that readers would ask: the Potter The fandom, in general, has been amazing to me. Incredibly supportive and I still get tons of love from the Potter fanaticism So the fandom in this book is not a portrait of [that] fanaticism It’s a very… different kind of fandom.”
