Sigurd And GudrúnJ.R.R. Tolkien
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Release Date: May 5, 2009
978-0547273426
According to the Amazon.com page:
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún is a previously unpublished work by J.R.R. Tolkien, written while Tolkien was Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford during the 1920s and ‘30s, before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It makes available for the first time Tolkien’s extensive retelling in English narrative verse of the epic Norse tales of Sigurd the Völsung and The Fall of the Niflungs. It includes an introduction by J.R.R. Tolkien, drawn from one of his own lectures on Norse literature, with commentary and notes on the poems by Christopher Tolkien.
Christopher Tolkien has been busy again! He's dipped into the store of his father's unpublished works to come up with another gem. This one may be a bit more specialized than the Children of Hurin, but if you are a fan of Tolkien, it appears to be another "must have" book. I know I'm going to be buying it as soon as I see it.
The other market for whom this is a perfect book would be those who like the Norse sagas. I'm looking at it as a good introduction to those, and if I like this, am probably going to get translations of some of the Norse and Icelandic poems as well.
Going by Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which has maintained the rhythm and alliteration of the Middle-English, this is sure to be a fine piece of work. I'm certainly looking forward to it.
Remember, it comes out on May 5th.
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