The Fountainhead
First published in 1943, this is the novel that introduced the world to Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and turned her into a literary force to be reckoned with. It still crackles with energy today. At its centre is Howard Roark, a young architect with the kind of iron-willed conviction that makes him impossible to ignore and equally impossible to manage. He refuses to bend. Around him orbits Dominique Francon, a woman of striking beauty who loves Roark deeply yet, in a cruel twist of self-defeat, chooses to wed his greatest adversary. Society, threatened by Roark's unshakeable sense of self, turns on him with the full force of its outrage. What Rand puts forward is a genuinely provocative idea: that human progress flows directly from individual ego, not collective will. You might find yourself arguing with the book. That's rather the point. It's the sort of fiction that gets under your skin and stays there, long after you've closed the cover. The New York Times called Rand 'a writer of great power' with 'a subtle and ingenious mind', describing this as the only novel of ideas by an American woman she could bring to mind. Whether you agree with Rand's worldview or not, the novel's intellectual boldness is genuinely hard to dismiss.
- Author: Ayn Rand
- Publisher: Signet
- Genre: Contemporary Fiction
- ISBN: 978-0451191151
- Pages: 200 pages