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Loading... The Children of Hurin (original 2007; edition 2008)by J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (Editor)
Work InformationThe Children of Húrin by J. R. R. Tolkien (2007)
  
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 DavidWGilmore | Mar 15, 2024 |   FourOfFiveWits | Sep 19, 2023 | The names and references to Tolkien's surrounding legendarium and vast cast of characters and locations are occasionally somewhat bewildering (even to a fan like me, as I've not been very immersed in this since my long-forgotten teens), but there is a handy glossary of names and places in the end of the book, as well as a map. Even should one not be inclined to look them up, though, they largely do not matter, and the ones that do appear sufficiently often to establish themselves from the narrative itself. The transitions between summarising events and showing direct dialogue are smooth and never jarred me, despite that likely being a result of the different types of sources the narrative has been fetched from. And Alan Lee's illustrations are gorgeous -- though I would have liked a more active looking cover than the still, thoughtful pose they went with, and perhaps a more detailed close-up internal illustration of the Father of Dragons than I got. But this is nitpicking, and I enjoyed them and the book greatly. (  ) Lucky-Loki | Jul 26, 2023 | Una ragione è certamente editoriale: qui ci si prende il tempo necessario, anche tipograficamente, e le illustrazioni di Lee aiutano. Ma se in questa edizione il tema della salvezza ogni tanto si affaccia, ed Earendil è addirittura prefigurato esplicitamente a Tùrin stesso, nel capitolo del Silmarillion mi pare rimanga quasi solo la lotta, da subito perdente, di chi vuole salvarsi da solo. E perde, sempre, continuamente, inspiegabilmente. Qui ci si chiede, con Golding, "perché le cose vanno sempre male?" Ci si potrebbe fare una lezione sul copione in Analisi Transazionale. Il Silmarillion rimane un gradino sopra, nel suo abbraccio totale - ma è una gloria che risplende più luminosa sopra la Nirnaeth e sulla tomba dei figli di Hurin. (  ) kenshin79 | Jul 25, 2023 | Try reading The Children of Húrin. ( )1  gideonslife | Jan 5, 2023 |
 ... So there's something very pagan about Tolkien's world, and it gets more pagan as we go further back. The Children of Húrin is practically Wagnerian. It has a lone, brooding hero, a supremely malicious dragon, a near-magical helmet, a long-standing curse, a dwarf of ambiguous moral character called Mîm and - the clincher, this - incest. Which is here a disaster and not, as in Wagner, a two-fingers-to-fate passion. Readers will already have come across the story in its essence in The Silmarillion and, substantially, in Unfinished Tales, which came out in 1980. One suspects that those who bought the latter book will not feel too cheated when they buy and read The Children of Húrin. ... Christopher Tolkien has brought together his father's text as well, I think, as he can. In an afterword, he attests to the difficulty his father had in imposing "a firm narrative structure" on the story, and indeed it does give the impression of simply being one damned thing after another, with the hero, Túrin, stomping around the forests in a continuous sulk at his fate, much of which, it seems, he has brought upon himself. As to whether the story brings out the feeling of "deep time" which Tolkien considered one of the duties of his brand of imaginative literature, I cannot really tell, for I do not take this kind of thing as seriously as I did when I was a boy and feel that perhaps the onus for the creation of such a sense of wonder is being placed too much on the reader. Actually, the First Age here seems a pretty miserable place to be; Orcs everywhere, people being hunted into outlawhood or beggary, and with no relief, light or otherwise, from a grumpy, pipe-smoking wizard. But it does have a strange atmosphere all of its own. Maybe it does work.  Inspired by the Norse tale of Sigurd and Fafnir, Tolkien first wrote a story about a dragon in 1899, at the age of 7. At school he discovered the Kalevala, a Finnish epic poem, and by 1914 was trying to turn the tale of Kullervo into “a short story somewhat on the lines of Morris’s romances”. By 1919 he had combined these elements in what became the tale of Túrin Turambar. The book is beautiful, but other than the atmospheric illustrations by Alan Lee, and a discussion of the editorial process, much of what lies between the covers was actually published in either The Silmarillion (1977) or Unfinished Tales (1980). Yet this new, whole version serves a valuable purpose. In The Children of Húrin we could at last have the successor to The Lord of the Rings that was so earnestly and hopelessly sought by Tolkien’s publishers in the late 1950s. Is contained inIs an expanded version ofInspiredHas as a studyAwardsDistinctions
Painstakingly restored from Tolkien's manuscripts and presented for the first time as a fully continuous and stand alone story, the epic tale of The Children of Húrin will reunite fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves and Men, dragons and Dwarves, eagles and Orcs, and the rich landscape and characters unique to Tolkien. There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before The Lord of the Rings, and the story told in this book is set in the great country that lay beyond the Grey Havens in the West: lands where Treebeard once walked, but which were drowned in the great cataclysm that ended the First Age of the World. In that remote time Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in the vast fortress of Angband, the Hells of Iron, in the North; and the tragedy of Túrin and his sister Nienor unfolded within the shadow of the fear of Angband and the war waged by Morgoth against the lands and secret cities of the Elves. Their brief and passionate lives were dominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bore them as the children of Húrin, the man who had dared to defy and to scorn him to his face. Against them he sent his most formidable servant, Glaurung, a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragon of fire. Into this story of brutal conquest and flight, of forest hiding-places and pursuit, of resistance with lessening hope, the Dark Lord and the Dragon enter in direly articulate form. Sardonic and mocking, Glaurung manipulated the fates of Túrin and Nienor by lies of diabolic cunning and guile, and the curse of Morgoth was fulfilled. The earliest versions of this story by J.R.R. Tolkien go back to the end of the First World War and the years that followed; but long afterwards, when The Lord of the Rings was finished, he wrote it anew and greatly enlarged it in complexities of motive and character: it became the dominant story in his later work on Middle-earth. But he could not bring it to a final and finished form. In this book Christopher Tolkien has constructed, after long study of the manuscripts, a coherent narrative without any editorial invention. No library descriptions found. 
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.912Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1901-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.87)
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The Children of Húrin Book Discussion: Post after you finish the book.
Wikipedia in English (2)
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The story revolves mainly around Turin, son of Hurin, one of the lords of Men who was imprisoned by Morgoth. Turin is a tragic figure - whose boldness and determination often have consequences. And not just for him. Everywhere he goes, the shadow of his fate falls on those around him.
Turin's sister, Nienor enters the story about 2/3 of the way through. She is also a tragic figure - largely in part because of getting intertwined with her brother's life.
This has to be one of my favorite Tolkien stories apart from The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings. It reminds me a lot of Greek and Shakespearean tragedies. Lots of subplots that all end up being tied nicely together in the end. (