Nur Huda el-Wahabi, a 15-year-old victim of the Grenfell Tower fire, will be commemorated in the second installment of Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust trilogy.
Pullman auctioned the right to name a character in the Book of Dust trilogy as part of the Authors for Grenfell Tower event. The auction was won by Nur Huda’s former teacher, James Clements, who bid £1,500 in an effort to win the auction in her name. News of his bid spread through social media, and together, 457 readers and authors managed to raise a combined total of £33,720 for Nur Huda el-Wahabi.
“Having been a teacher myself, I know how I’d have felt if a pupil of mine had been in some similar disaster … The absolute injustice of it struck home with me, and must have done with so many others. So I’m very pleased to see the success of James Clements’s initiative. I wish I’d met Nur Huda, and I’m desperately sorry she died. I hope the character I give her name to will be someone she’d have liked to know,” Pullman told the Guardian.
The Authors for Grenfell Tower auctions were organised by literary agent Molly Ker Hawn and young adult authors Harriet Reuter Hapgood (The Square Root of Summer) and Sara Barnard (). Over 600 British and international authors auctioned books, author events and other prizes. Collectively, the auctions raised £180,597 for the victims of the Grenfell Tower tragedy and their families.
