When confronted with the similarities between his own published works, primarily "The Lord of the Rings", and the massive cycle of operas by Richard Wagner, "The Ring of the Niebelungs", an obviously defensive J. R. R. Tolkien answered that both rings were round, but that was where the similarities ended. Of course it doesn't take a close reader of abnormal insight to see that on this point Tolkien was being a tad disingenuous. There are indeed commonalities which can not be explained away by both artist simply using the same source material, the the Germanic and Nordic legends and sagas as inspiration for their works.

This debt to Wagner is even more pronounced in some of the earliest writings he produced about Middle Earth, the vast genealogical, mythical, and linguistic backdrop for "The Lord of the Rings", which was still in a fragmentary and unpublished state at the time of his death in 1973. His son Christopher Tolkien has often been criticised for compiling, editing, and publishing these unfinished works, starting with "The Silmarillion", often called the Old Testament of Middle Earth, in 1977.

This was a labour that spanned Tolkien's entire writing life, forming the tapestry of the world in which "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" was later to be set. Though written by a devout catholic this mythological book nonetheless straddles the purely pagan and the distant unknowable and hands-off God of abstract modern theology in such a way as to end up an almost secular myth. No matter how one approaches it, it's hard to deny the raw power of some of its passages. Indeed, some readers, me among them, would argue that having first penetrated the dense King James' Bible meets Norse sagas prose style, "The Silmarillion" in fact stands up better to repeat readings than any of his other books, including the Ring.

But it, and the further books in The History Of Middle Earth series, were not for the casual Tolkien fan. Christopher Tolkien himself explained part of the reason why when he said:

[...] the compendious or epitomizing form and manner of 'The Silmarillion,' with its suggestion of ages of poetry and 'lore' behind it, strongly evokes a sense of 'untold tales,' even in the telling of them; 'distance' is never lost. There is no narrative urgency, the pressure and fear of the immediate and unknown event. We do not actually see the Silmarils as we see the Ring.

The point of view is that of a scribe compiling a compendium of far older disparate, but interrelated, myths, legends and sagas that in some form are already known to the audience, in the same way that most of the pieces that went into Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" were already known by heart by most of his Greek compatriots, just not as an artistically coherent epic.

Nowhere in the many stories that make up "The Silmarillion" is Wagner's influence more deeply felt than in the tale of the children of Húrin, centred on Húrin's son Túrin Turambar. Not only are several of the story elements, such as the dragon Glaurung, Túrin's unwittingly incestuous relationship with his sister Nienor, as well as the personalities of the characters involved almost lifted from "The Ring of the Niebelungs". But the very mood and theme underlying the tale, heroism in the face of unbeatable odds, with no promise, or even hope, of a happy ending, even in the afterlife, the pure ethos of Germanic paganism as filtered through Wagner. The brave and gifted, but haughty and impetuous Túrin is the spitting image of Siegfried.

The story is set in the so called First Age of Middle Earth, some 6 millennia prior to the adventures of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", when humans where still very much playing second fiddle to far older and greater powers, no Hobbit was to be seen, and the kingdoms of the Elves were fighting a losing battle against the original lord of darkness, Morgoth, to whom later pretender Sauron was but a servant.

Húrin of Dor-lómin leads his men in battle against the forces of Morgoth, alongside the Elves, in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad ("The Battle of Unnumbered Tears"), so called because as battles go, it did not go well. The Elves retreat to their hidden cities. And the defiant Húrin is chained to a mountain top by Morgoth and cursed to sit and watch tragedy overtake his family. Túrin is brought up among the Elves, and grows up a mighty warrior, though one prone to rash actions and getting his friends killed almost as much as the enemy. One could make the case that strictly speaking his character is his curse, and any intervention on Morgoth's part is superfluous. His gifts bring him to the heights of glory, only to see all his efforts turned to ashes. He finds the love of his life, only to discover that she is his long lost sister, a revelation that dooms them both.

As the tale of the children of Húrin was also one of the first Tolkien started writing, there were numerous versions over the years, both in prose and verse, some longer, some shorter, none of them truly finished. The now 81 year old Christopher Tolkien has collated all these different versions and edited them together to a 259 page narrative called "The Children of Húrin", which while not the intimate point of view story of the his more popular books, is still far more fleshed out and detailed than the versions we've read before.

Of course, in the wake of the success of the "The Lord of The Rings" movies, it was only to be expected that Hollywood would salivate at the thought of another dip into the Tolkien bowl. Months prior to people queueing up in front of bookshops yesterday to get their hands on the book, rumours started circulating that a film version would follow shortly. But there are a couple of complicating factors.

One snag is the conflict that erupted between trilogy director Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema over the profits from those films, leading to Jackson being ruled out of their plans for future Tolkien projects (previous coverage here and here). The latest news on that is that the rumour that "Spiderman" director Sam Raimi would take the helm for "The Hobbit" have been given some legs by the man himself.

'Peter Jackson might be the best filmmaker on the planet right now. But, um, I don't know what's going to happen next for me right now. First and foremost, those are Peter Jackson and Bob Shaye's films. If Peter didn't want to do it, and Bob wanted me to do it — and they were both okay with me picking up the reins — that would be great.

Another factor that might keep "The Children of Húrin" off the screens, at least for a while, is that the Tolkien estate, and Christopher Tolkien, who wasn't all that keen even on the "The Lord of the Rings" films, have ruled it out for the time being.

David Brawn, director of publishing at HarperCollins, tells Reuters that overtures have indeed been made by studios eager to cash in on the new novel. But here's the kicker: They're not selling... at least not yet.

"We all want this first and foremost to enjoy life as a book," said Brawn. "No one's saying never to a film [but] the film rights are reserved by the estate. We want to see what reaction it gets and then let it run its course."

So there it is. There is also reason to ask if the dour tragedy of Húrin and his offspring, incest and all, unleavened by jolly Hobbits, or even the slightest whiff of a happy ending, would really be mega box office material?