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Contents ( 57)
  1. HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE
  2. Dedication
  3. Contents
  4. Chapter One
  5. IN WHICH SOPHIE TALKS TO HATS
  6. Chapter Two
  7. IN WHICH SOPHIE IS COMPELLED TO SEEK HER FORTUNE
  8. Chapter Three
  9. IN WHICH SOPHIE ENTERS INTO A CASTLE AND A BARGAIN
  10. Chapter Four
  11. IN WHICH SOPHIE DISCOVERS SEVERAL STRANGE THINGS
  12. Chapter Five
  13. WHICH IS FAR TOO FULL OF WASHING
  14. Chapter Six
  15. IN WHICH HOWL EXPRESSES HIS FEELINGS WITH GREEN SLIME
  16. Chapter Seven
  17. IN WHICH A SCARECROW PREVENTS SOPHIE FROM LEAVING THE CASTLE
  18. Chapter Eight
  19. IN WHICH SOPHIE LEAVES THE CASTLE IN SEVERAL DIRECTIONS AT ONCE
  20. Chapter Nine
  21. IN WHICH MICHAEL HAS TROUBLE WITH A SPELL
  22. Chapter Ten
  23. IN WHICH CALCIFER PROMISES SOPHIE A HINT
  24. Chapter Eleven
  25. IN WHICH HOWL GOES TO A STRANGE COUNTRY IN SEARCH OF A SPELL
  26. Chapter Twelve
  27. IN WHICH SOPHIE BECOMES HOWL’S OLD MOTHER
  28. Chapter Thirteen
  29. IN WHICH SOPHIE BLACKENS HOWL’S NAME
  30. Chapter Fourteen
  31. IN WHICH A ROYAL WIZARD CATCHES A COLD
  32. Chapter Fifteen
  33. IN WHICH HOWL GOES TO A FUNERAL IN DISGUISE
  34. Chapter Sixteen
  35. IN WHICH THERE IS A GREAT DEAL OF WITCHCRAFT
  36. Chapter Seventeen
  37. IN WHICH THE MOVING CASTLE MOVES HOUSE
  38. Chapter Eighteen
  39. IN WHICH THE SCARECROW AND MISS ANGORIAN REAPPEAR
  40. Chapter Nineteen
  41. IN WHICH SOPHIE EXPRESSES HER FEELINGS WITH WEED-KILLER
  42. Chapter Twenty
  43. IN WHICH SOPHIE FINDS FURTHER DIFFICULTIES IN LEAVING THE CASTLE
  44. Chapter Twenty-One
  45. IN WHICH A CONTRACT IS CONCLUDED BEFORE WITNESSES
  46. HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE
  47. Read on for an excerpt from The Merlin Conspiracy
  48. I
  49. ONE
  50. Read on for an excerpt from Dark Lord of Derkholm
  51. ONE
  52. Read on for an excerpt from Archer’s Goon
  53. Chapter One
  54. About the Author
  55. Credits
  56. Copyright
  57. About the Publisher

This didn’t appear to trouble her unduly.

My opinion of Howl is that, much as I love him, he is the last person I would want to marry. Apart from anything else, I would want to get in the bathroom sometimes. See what you think when you read this book.

2. You say on the dedication page that a young boy gave you the idea for the Moving Castle, but did it spring into your mind fully formed or take time to develop?

When the boy gave me the idea of a Moving Castle, I knew at once that I would want to write about it, but it took a long time to decide how. I needed to discover Howl and Sophie first. This didn’t happen for about three years, by which time I had totally forgotten the safe place where I had put the boy’s name and address.

3. Why do you think Howl, Sophie, and Calcifer make such a spectacular team?

Howl, Sophie, and Calcifer make a very good team (in spite of disagreeing violently from time to time) because they all have strong magic, which they use in quite different ways. Howl is dashing and original—and vain and quirky of course—where Sophie is quite practical and good at covering up Howl’s dashing blunders. Calcifer is very fond of Sophie because she released him from his contract with Howl and, in addition, gave him one thousand years of life (as a shooting star he should have died long ago). So he will back Sophie up whatever she does. But Calcifer and Howl, because they have been almost one person for some years in the past, work wonderfully together as a team, at double strength. Between them, they can do almost anything magical.

4. The characters in Howl’s Moving Castle, Castle in the Air, and House of Many Ways must word their wishes and spells very carefully. Is it important that magic not be too easy?

Magic is not easy, although it seems it should be. You have to think through carefully what you need your magic to do, otherwise some tiny spell might have disastrous consequences. For instance, if you were to make two and two add up to three instead of four, you would change the way the whole universe works and it is quite possible that everyone would die of it. So you have to make your magic very precise. Howl knows this, and so does Calcifer, but Sophie is not always so careful.

5. Doors that open onto many different places figure prominently in Howl’s world. What makes doorways so powerful and mysterious?

Doors are very powerful things. Things are different on either side of them. This applies not only to magic portals, where you might find a whole other world when you open the portal, or the kingdom of the dead, or even heaven or hell; but it applies to quite ordinary doors too. Your front door gives you the street (you hope!) and your back door may well give you a garden, and indoors you open a door into another room. But there is always the possibility that it will be a street you have never seen before, a garden that belongs to Bluebeard or someone, or a room that is in some other house entirely. In Howl’s world, since this is a magic world, these possibilities actually come to be true a lot of the time. But there is no guarantee that it is not like this in our own world too. In my home, I always leave most doors open, just to prevent another place suddenly turning up on the other side of them.