One Ring in the first edition of "The Hobbit", Gollum offers to surrender the Ring to Bilbo as a reward for winning the Riddle Game. When Tolkien revised the nature of the Ring for "The Lord of the Rings", he realized that the Ring's grip on Gollum would never permit him to give it up willingly. Tolkien therefore revised the second edition of "The Hobbit": after losing the Riddle Game to Bilbo, Gollum went to get his "Precious" (as he always called it) so he could kill and eat Bilbo, but flew into a rage when he found the Ring missing. Deducing
What Was Before What Was Before What Was Before () is a 2010 novel by the German writer Martin Mosebach. Through a series of vignettes, it tells the story of a man from the affluent suburbs of Frankfurt, who is asked by his girlfriend what his life was like before they met. An English translation by Kári Driscoll was published in 2014. "Publishers Weekly" wrote: "Mosebach's charming, exuberant narrator is not be trusted, and the novel calls into question our notions of memory. Mosebach's writing is florid, tinged with a biting wit. ... Irreverent, playful, and intricate, Mosebach's book is a deconstruction of