Andy Serkis is once again lending his voice to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, this time by narrating an unabridged audiobook of The Silmarillion.
The Silmarillion isn’t a novel in the traditional sense and is, in Tolkien’s own words, “a compilation, a compendious narrative, made long afterwards from sources of great diversity.”
Serkis, who recently narrated an audiobook edition of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, was aware that he was tackling a different beast with what is essentially Tolkien’s origin story for Middle-earth.
“The Silmarillion was always going to be a hard mountain to climb, and therefore perhaps the most rewarding,” Serkis said in a statement (via The Bookseller). “I was seriously daunted. Whereas the narrative structure and characters of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings provide the narrator with an immense propulsion, The Silmarillion is like reading an extraordinary, ancient bible, with its own creation mythology spanning many ages, written over many years. But once in the flow of Tolkien’s poetic imagination, and limitless authority of his universe, there were passages that I found myself completely mesmerized by as I was reading, and it became a thrillingly wild and magical experience. I can only hope the listener feels the same way.”
Serkis’ audiobook rendition of The Silmarillion was edited by Christopher Tolkien and will be released by HarperCollins in June 2023.
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