Grendel’s Mum

BEOWULFbeo

J. R. R. and Christopher Tolkien

Mariner Books, August 2015

 

A thousand years on, the sharpness of Beowulf‘s images still strikes us. Longships cruise amid icy spray. A king stares with fear amid the riches of his hall. Then comes the fiend Grendel stalking across the moors. Tolkien’s translation weds to these visions the rhythm and grandeur of language that rumbles even as it exults, which rolls like the swells of the sea. Continue reading

  • You might also like

    • Red as Blood, White as Clay

      The release of a new book by Shaun Tan should be accompanied by a day of national celebration. If the state of Victoria can celebrate a horse race, then it’s not too much to ask that the country as a whole take a day to wave a coloured flag for … Continue reading