It is near the end of the first age of the children of Iluvatar, some six and a half millennia before the War of the Ring. Gondolin (the famous Elvish city where the legendary swords Glamdring and Orcrist were forged) still stands. The sun is young. Morgoth, the original dark lord and the master of Sauron, still lives and threatens all that is good in Middle Earth.

Hurin, one of the greatest warriors of the first age and a tragic hero among men, has three children, and they (especially Turin) are great tragic heroes in their own right. This is their story.

A shortened version of this tale was included in the published Silmarillion, but this is the full epic, now published in its entirety for the first time. Edited together from J.R.R. Tolkien's notes by his son Christopher Tolkien, the Tale of the Children of Hurin is the first complete Tolkien book to be published in years.