BRITAIN: The fifth instalment of Harry Potter will hit bookshelves on June 21st, it was announced yesterday.
The next JK Rowling novel about the boy wizard is to be called Harry Potter And The Order of the Phoenix. At 255,000 words, it will be even longer than her last book, Goblet Of Fire, the fourth Potter outing, which ran to 191,000 words.
The new book will have 38 chapters, one more than Goblet of Fire. Order of the Phoenix has been delivered to the publishers Bloomsbury and Scholastic and will go on sale simultaneously around the world. Nigel Newton, chief executive of Bloomsbury Publishing, said: "We are thrilled to announce the publication date. Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix is absolutely superb and will delight all JK Rowling's fans. She has written a brilliant and utterly compelling new adventure."
The new book begins: "The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive . . . The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four."
Teasingly, the publishers have revealed that Harry will be told a secret by Dumbledore, the Headmaster of his school, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft, which will change his world forever.
Goblet of Fire became the fastest selling book in history on the first weekend of its publication in July 2000. It sold 372,000 copies in hardback in the UK alone during its first weekend in the shops.