Le Seigneur des Anneaux: Le Retour du Roi (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) » (French Language Edition)

It seems an unlikely formula for success: an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon, and a book that begins with a little man who lives in a hole in the ground. But The Hobbit, followed by The Lord of the Rings, created the modern genre of heroic fantasy and made J.R.R. Tolkien one of the most widely-read authors in the world.

Harry Potter has no idea how famous he is. That's because he's being raised by his miserable muggle aunt and uncle who are terrified Harry will learn that he's a wizard, just as his parents here.

But everything changes when Harry is summoned to attend an infamous school for wizards and he begins to discover some clues about his illustrious birghright.

From the surprising way he is greeted by a lovable giant, to the unique curriculum and colorful faculty at his unusual school, Harry finds himself drawn deep inside a mystical world he never knew existed and closer to his own noble destiny.

Publishers Weekly

J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Silmarillion (1977), published four years after his death, continued the saga of the mythological kingdom of Middle-Earth, begun in his epic trilogy Lord of the Rings. Christopher Tolkien, son of the English novelist and medievalist, here reconstructs the evolution of The Silmarillion using his father's manuscripts and notes and adding his own extensive commentaries and annotations. Picking up where this massive study left off, he reprints the entire text of the unfinished Grey Annals (begun around 1930, reworked in the 1950s, and largely incorporated in The Silmarillion). Amid momentous battles and heroic deeds, we learn how Hurin the Steadfast, released after 28 years of captivity in Morgoth's fortress, journeys among the forest people of Brethril, spreading disaster, and follow the exploits of his son Turin Turambar and daughter Nienor. Included also are J.R.R. Tolkien's discussion of his characters' motives, his detailed maps of imaginary realism, and his essays on the origins and meanings of elvish words and the Dwarves' elaborate gestural language. For hard-core Tolkien devotees and scholars. (Dec.)