The Fury of Gawain & Other French Medieval Romances

While the other knights of Camaalot and Logres strain towards the Holy Gradal, Gawain goes somewhere darker: into the depths of his own rage. These eight romances, translated from medieval French sources mostly of the thirteenth century, show an Arthurian world stranger and bloodier than the familiar legend. Arthur's foster-brother Kei is crueller here than any later telling allowed, so cruel the whole Round Table wants him dead, and Tristan is at once the most dishonourable knight in Britain and the best loved.

There is a grim account of where the Grail came from, a Grail quest retold as a folktale with plenty of crude humour, and a glimpse of Lancelot and Guenevere after Arthur leaves for Avalon. Some of these stories appear in English for the first time. For anyone who suspects the familiar Arthur is the tidied-up version, this first volume is a bracing corrective.