The Unconquered ― With Another, Earlier Adaptation of We the Living

Ayn Rand was an American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system known as Objectivism.

In the 1930s, Rand was asked to adapt her first novel, We the Living, for the theatre. We the Living is a story of life in post-revolutionary Russia and Rand's first statement against communism. It was not a commercial success when it was published, but has gone on to sell over 3 million copies.

The first substantial fiction of Rand to appear in over twenty years, this important volume contains two never-before published versions of the play - the first and last versions (the latter entitled The Unconquered). With a preface that places the work in its historical and political context, an essay on the history of the theatrical adaptation by Jeff Britting, the curator of the Ayn Rand Archives, and two alternative endings, this book is a must-have for anyone interested in Rand's philosophy.

Robert Mayhew is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Seton Hall University, USA. He is the author of Ayn Rand and Song of Russia: Communism and Anti-Communism in 1940s Hollywood and six books on ancient Greek philosophy, as well as the editor of Ayn Rand's Marginalia, The Art of Nonfiction, and Ayn Rand Answers. He is on the steering committee for The Ayn Rand Society and has been the recipient of the Loeb Classical Library Foundation Grant, an Anthem Foundation Grant, a University Research Council Award from Seton Hall University, and a Gaskin Foundation Donation.