Anyone waiting on a paperback edition of
The Story of Kullervo, I’ve got great news for you!
August 24, 2017 will see the paperback edition published. I’ve
checked the dimensions of the book, and it will ‘match’ most of the
other Tolkien books in paperback in terms of size. If you own
Sigurd & Gudrun in paperback, for instance, it will be of very similar size and of the same height.
The ISBN for the paperback by Harper Collins is: 9780008131388.
“The
world first publication of a previously unknown work of fantasy by
J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the powerful
story of a doomed young man who is sold into slavery and who swears
revenge on the magician who killed his father. Kullervo son of Kalervo
is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien's
characters. 'Hapless Kullervo', as Tolkien called him,
is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny.
Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed his
father, kidnapped his mother, and who tries three times to kill him
when still a boy, Kullervo is alone save for
the love of his twin sister, Wanona, and guarded by the magical powers
of the black dog, Musti. When Kullervo is sold into slavery he swears
revenge on the magician, but he will learn that even at the point of
vengeance there is no escape from the cruellest
of fates. Tolkien wrote that The Story of Kullervo was 'the germ of my
attempt to write legends of my own', and was 'a major matter in the
legends of the First Age'; his Kullervo was the ancestor of Turin
Turambar, tragic incestuous hero of The Silmarillion.
In addition to being a powerful story in its own right, The Story of
Kullervo - published here for the first time with the author's drafts,
notes and lecture-essays on its source-work, The Kalevala, is a
foundation stone in the structure of Tolkien's invented
world.”
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