One Ring mind, turning him into the creature known as Gollum. The Ring, which Sauron had endowed with a will of its own, manipulated Gollum into hiding in a cave under the Misty Mountains near Mirkwood, where Sauron was beginning to resurface. There Gollum remained for nearly 500 years, until the Ring tired of him and fell off his finger as he was hunting an orc. As is told in "The Hobbit", Bilbo found the Ring shortly afterward while lost in the tunnels near Gollum's lair. When "The Hobbit" was written, Tolkien had not yet conceived of the Ring's sinister history. Thus,
What Was Before how we choose to tell stories." 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,