Which author wrote the 1971 novel Grendel, retelling Beowulf from the monster’s viewpoint? John Gardner wrote it.
Gardner’s Grendel retells part of the Old English epic Beowulf through the eyes of its antagonist. Instead of presenting Grendel simply as a supernatural enemy, the novel gives him an inner life, a distinctive voice, and philosophical questions about meaning, isolation, violence, and the nature of good and evil.
The novel was published in 1971 by Alfred A. Knopf in the United States. Its Grendel is often described as an antihero, though he remains capable of cruelty and destruction. The story reworks familiar figures from Beowulf, including Hrothgar, Unferth, the dragon, and Beowulf himself, while changing the reader’s moral perspective.
Gardner drew on existentialist ideas, particularly those associated with Jean-Paul Sartre. The book became one of his best-known works and later inspired the 1981 animated film Grendel Grendel Grendel, which featured Peter Ustinov as the voice of Grendel. Seamus Heaney, by contrast, is chiefly associated with a celebrated translation of Beowulf, not authorship of Gardner’s novel.