Thirty-four years after Tolkien’s death, here is a new book, put together and edited by his son and literary executor Christopher Tolkien, that brings us a bleak story of evil and heroism set in the Elder Days. The story was begun by Tolkien at the end of the First World War in which he fought, and went through several versions, but was never quite finished by him. Yet it was to become the overarching theme of all his later work on Middle Earth. Weaving the narrative together from incomplete versions that include a chapter of The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales and parts of narrative poems, Christopher Tolkien brings us the tragic story of Turin “Turambar” (“Master of Fate”) and his sister Nienor (“Mourning”, also known as Niniel, “Maid of Tears”).

The story begins six and a half thousand years before the Council of Elrond was held in Rivendell, when Hurin Thalion the Steadfast, the mortal Lord of Dor-lomin, defies Morgoth, the Black Enemy and first Dark Lord. This epic confrontation, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears is bitter and long, and the opponents of the Dark Lord fight with desperate heroism, but they are doomed: “Last of all Hurin stood alone.” Morgoth orders Hurin to be captured alive. “You are not the Lord of Men, and shall not be,” says Hurin defiantly to Morgoth before the Dark Lord binds him up and curses him with the most terrible curse of all, “to see with Morgoth’s eyes”. Hurin is condemned to see this distorted version of the world until the end.

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