Títle: The
Story of Kullervo
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
Publisher: Harper
Collins
Year: 2015
Pages: 168
ISBN-13: 9780008131364
PVP: 9,45€
(Hardcover) Amazon
Mark: 9/10
SYNOPSIS
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 Trin 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.
