Fan Translates 139,000-Word Russian Rewrite of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

"In 1999, Russian scientist Kirill Yeskov wrote The Last Ring-Bearer, a 139,000-word novel that re-wrote The Lord of the Rings trilogy–re-imagining J.R.R. Tolkien‘s heroic epic as a bloody war with unrecorded consequences. [...] In the 15-year-old book, Yeskov re-wrote Tolkien’s masterpiece from the point of view of Mordor, a region defeated in the war to control Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings. It focused on a single question: “what was that war really about?”"

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/fan-translates-139000-word-russian-rewrite-of-the-lord-of-the-rings-trilogy_b22584

" “[H]istory will be written by those who will win under your banner. There are tried and true recipes for that: cast Mordor as the Evil Empire that wished to enslave the entire Middle Earth, and its inhabitants as non-human monsters that rode werewolves and ate human flesh …  I am not talking about history now, but rather yourself. Allow me to repeat my rude question about the people who hold the knowledge of the civilization of Mordor. That they will have to be destroyed, quite literally, is beyond doubt – ‘uproot the weed entirely’ – otherwise the whole endeavor is meaningless.”"


See also:

Kirill Eskov

"As a fiction writer he published several books, one of the most famous being The Last Ringbearer (Russian: Последний кольценосец, Polish: Ostatni Władca Pierścienia), an alternative retelling of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, as told from the point of view of Sauron's forces, based on the proverb: "History is written by the victors."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirill_Eskov


Yisroel Markov

"The result of this re-appraisal was the publication in 1999 of The Last Ring-bearer - a re-thinking of Tolkien's story in real-world terms. Dr. Yeskov, a professional paleontologist whose job is reconstructing long-extinct organisms and their way of life from fossil remnants, performs essentially the same feat in The Last Ring-bearer, reconstructing the real world of Tolkien's Arda from The Lord of the Rings - the heroic tales of the Free Men of the West written in that world. We have a pretty good idea how well heroic tales map to reality from our own world..."

http://ymarkov.livejournal.com/270570.html


Russian

http://fan.lib.ru/e/eskov/last_ringlord.shtml


English

http://www.sendspace.com/file/a75r7u