The Children of Húrin

The Children of Húrin (2007) is a forthcoming completion of a tale by J. R. R. Tolkien. Begun in 1918 and revised several times, the tale was never completed by Tolkien before his death. Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien, has now completed the tale for publication for the first time as an independent work.

The book is scheduled for publication on 17 April 2007, by HarperCollins in the United Kingdom and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States. Alan Lee, illustrator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings has created the jacket and the book will include colour paintings by him too.

The story deals with a hero of the First Age, Húrin, of the race of Men, who is cursed by the Dark Lord Morgoth, and the effect this curse has on his children Túrin Turambar and Nienor.

The Children of Húrin takes the reader back to a time long before The Lord of the Rings, in an area of Middle-earth that was to be drowned before ever Hobbits appeared, and when the great enemy was still the fallen Vala: Morgoth with Sauron only his lieutenant. This heroic romance is the tale of the Man, Húrin, who dared to defy Morgoth's force of evil, and his family's tragic destiny, as it follows his son Túrin Turambar's travails through the lost world of Beleriand.

Source: Wikipedia