Philip Pullman, the Whitbread award-winning author, has made an implicit criticism of the modern novel, claiming that unless it does more to tackle moral questions it is in danger of becoming "trivial and worthless".
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Books Festival, Pullman, who was once described as "semi-satanic" for his stance on religion, accused novelists of letting down their readers by failing to use their full potential to explore the moral questions of good and evil, life and death. Fiction would lose its value unless writers did more to tackle the great moral dilemmas of our time.
"Fantasy, and fiction in general, is failing to do what it might be doing," he said. "It has unlimited potential to explore all sorts of metaphysical and moral questions, but it is not doing that."
Described by a columnist as "the most dangerous author in Britain" for his children's trilogy His Dark Materials, Pullman this year became the first writer of children's books to win the Whitbread best book award for his final installment, the Amber Spyglass.
In the trilogy, the former Anglican attacked the poverty of modern secularism, offering an alternative world where children have companion spirits named "daemons".
At the festival Pullman appeared in a debate with the former bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, to address the question of how writers should tackle morality in a godless and uncertain age.
He said: "You can't leave morality out [of a novel] unless your work is so stupid and trivial and so worthless that [nobody] would want to read it anyway."
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