J.R.R. Tolkien’s unfinished novel about the time-traveller Alboin is titled The Lost Road.
Tolkien began The Lost Road in 1936 after discussing the idea of a time-travel story with C. S. Lewis. The projected novel was intended to connect different historical periods through recurring father-and-son figures, eventually reaching the legend of Atlantis, represented in Tolkien’s mythology by Númenor.
The central modern character is Alboin, whose name and experiences lead into earlier settings and mythic history. Tolkien abandoned the project before completing it, but some of its ideas later influenced The Lord of the Rings and related writings.
The manuscript was published posthumously in 1987 in The Lost Road and Other Writings, the fifth volume of Christopher Tolkien’s The History of Middle-earth. It is often confused with The Notion Club Papers, another unfinished time-related work published in the same broad series.