Middle-earth master JRR Tolkien also tried his hand at the 11th-century epic Beowulf. Nearly 90 years ago, the Lord of the Rings author translated the story, and now his son Christopher will publish Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary on May 22. “It is as if he entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail-shirts as they beached their ship on the coast of Denmark,” his son says, “listening to the rising anger of Beowulf at the taunting of Unferth, or looking up in amazement at Grendel’s terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot.”
