Christopher Tolkien put together this book from fragments his father left behind. The result, says Anoothi Vishal, is an epic that fans will savour.
Rubbing shoulders in the bookstores with Rowling’s Beedle The Bard, but rather more quietly, is the “latest” work by J R R Tolkien that adult fans of the fantasy genre would surely like to bring home. The Children of Hurin, a long, independent version of the legend from the Elder Days that finds reference in other Tolkien works (The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, The History of Middle-earth and Unfinished Tales) was published some time ago — but obviously, without that avalanche of publicity that usually precedes Rowling’s by-far simpler works.
The tale has been presented by Christopher Tolkien, JRR’s third son and literary executor, and put together with “minimum editorial presence”, in continuous narrative and without any gaps. The earliest version of this tale goes back to a collection of stories called The Book of Lost Tales, written by JRR during the years of World War I, much before he had even conceptualised the stories that would go on to form The Lord of the Rings.
The collection was left unfinished, though there are 14 completed tales in it. Of these, three were “of much greater length and fullness”: “Beren and Luthien” (that appears in a brief form in TLOTR), “The Children of Hurin” (1919) and “The Fall of Gondolin” (1916-1917), that have now been amalgamated. When TLOTR was finished, Tolkien wrote the tale anew, enlarging it with complexities of motive and character, and it became the dominant story in his later work on Middle-earth. But he could not bring it to the final and finished form that has now been published.
In fact, the author had recorded his aim to create a complete body of work, interlinked myths and legends from the history of his alternate universe, and the present book is an attempt at fulfilling that vision. But even if you know nothing of that universe and its many people and tongues, here’s a fascinating read anyway, much in the manner of the various epics of our own cultures.
In the preface, Christopher Tolkien makes it clear that the book is primarily addressed to “readers as may perhaps recall that the hide of Shelob was so horrendously hard that it ‘could not be pierced by any strength of men, not through Elf or Dwarf should forge the steel or the hand of Beren or of Turin wield it’, or that Elrond named Turin to Frodo at Rivendell as one of the ‘mighty Elf-friends of old’; but know no more of him”.
Needless to say, if you are a TLOTR fan, this book is a collectible. But even if you are a new convert to the genre, having only read the more fashionable Potter or the easier “children’s” fiction by way of
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C S Lewis and so forth, this is a story that may set you on a whole new path of discovery and, well, adventure.
At one level, The Children of Hurin is the quintessential epic, a tale of valour and quest, with the familiar motifs of battle, loss, destiny or the Greek “Fate” (here referred to as “Doom”), deceit and so forth marking the tale, besides the primary theme of the great struggle between Good and Evil, two absolute and primal forces that came into existence at the very time of Creation.
In fact, you may find parallels with Greek tragedy here as well, including in the final destiny of two of Hurin’s children — incest. Turin and his sister Nienor, brought up separately and away from one another, inadvertently land up getting married. The result is, obviously, death for them both. This is their final Doom, brought about by Morgoth, Evil incarnate, who wants to torment their father Hurin for defying him.
While that may be the plot in a nutshell, it hardly does justice to the power of Tolkien’s imagination, as all his readers will know. Turin’s adventures allow one a chance to live in Middle-earth in those most ancient of days, when it was peopled by Elves and Dwarves and Men (as also Orcs). It is also a chance for an unacquainted reader to realise how great a debt all modern writers of fantasy, none so much as Rowling perhaps, owe Tolkien, the father. It is here that the Dark Lord first appears, after all!
THE CHILDREN OF HURIN
J R R Tolkien
HarperCollins India
316 pages; Rs: 495