Russian paleontologist Kirell Yeskov decided to interpret Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings as a heroic retelling of what “really” happened in the war between the Men of the West and their enemies, and, using what we know about how heroic tales map to reality, wrote his own novelization of events, The Last Ring-Bearer, from the perspective of the forces of Mordor. Yisroel Markov has translated it into English.
The story starts in the Hutel-Hara sands:
It was at such a midnight hour that two men moved like gray shadows along the gravelly inner edge of a sickle-shaped gap between two low dunes, and the distance between them was exactly that prescribed by the Field Manual for such occasions. However, contrary to the rules, the one bearing the largest load was not the rear `main force’ private, but rather the `forward recon’ one, but there were good reasons for that. The one in the rear limped noticeably and was nearly out of strength; his face — narrow and beak-nosed, clearly showing a generous serving of Umbar blood — was covered with a sheen of sticky sweat. The one in the lead was a typical Orocuen by his looks, short and wide-faced — in other words, the very `Orc’ that mothers of Westernesse use to scare unruly children; this one advanced in a fast zigzagging pattern, his every movement noiseless, precise and spare, like those of a predator that has scented prey. He had given his cloak of bactrian wool, which always keeps the same temperature — whether in the heat of midday or the pre-dawn chill — to his partner, leaving himself with a captured Elvish cloak, priceless in a forest but utterly useless here in the desert.
Does an Empire-perspective take on Star Wars exist?
(Hat tip to Laura Miller of Salon, who has written quite a bit about Lewis’s Narnia.)
An anonymous guest reminds us of an old favorite:
Tyler Cowen made a similarly Straussian reading, which I’ve mentioned before.