A previously unpublished short novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Story of Kullervo, went on sale in French bookshops on Thursday, giving French-speaking readers their first access to an early work by the author of The Lord of the Rings.
The unfinished tale follows Kullervo, an orphan endowed with supernatural powers who is sold into slavery and sets out to take revenge on the magician responsible for his fate. According to the publisher's presentation of the book, Christian Bourgois, Kullervo is surely the darkest and most tragic of all Tolkien's characters.
Tolkien wrote the story when he was in his twenties. He said the tale, which drew on a Finnish legend, was the source of his own personal attempt to write legends.
Link to The Children of Hurin
The Story of Kullervo was first published in English in 2015. It laid the groundwork for one of Tolkien's most powerful stories, The Children of Hurin, which centers on the character Turin Turambar, described by British Tolkien specialist Verlyn Flieger, in her introduction to the book, as the most tragic hero in the writer's entire mythology.
Tolkien, an English writer and Oxford professor of philology, created the fantasy world of Middle-earth, the setting for The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. His work has inspired numerous film, television and video game adaptations, including Peter Jackson's film trilogies based on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
A steady stream of new material
Johann Defer, who oversees the Tolkien collection at Christian Bourgois, the author's longtime French publisher, said the news around Tolkien's work never stops, pointing to a steady rhythm of newly published texts, specialist studies, and the release of films, series and video games tied to his work. He added that several of Tolkien's texts still have not been translated.
Born in 1892, Tolkien died in 1973 at the age of 81. He remains one of the most widely read authors in the world, largely thanks to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which has sold more than 150 million copies, alongside The Hobbit and The Silmarillion.
Comic book biography also released
Separately, a graphic novel biography of Tolkien, Le Magicien de l'Anneau, has just been published by Futuropolis. It was written by Belgian author Chantal Van den Heuvel and illustrated by Danish artist Henrik Rehr. The book explores the complex personality of Tolkien, a professor with conservative views who was at times overtaken by the scale of the creative process behind his epic universe.
