A Christmas game at Arthur’s court becomes a year-long test of courage, honour and the private bargains a person makes when death stops being ceremonial and begins to look quite real.

Gawain accepts the Green Knight’s challenge, strikes off his head, then must seek him out a year later to receive the answering blow. Naturally, the decapitated man picks up his head and reminds him not to be late. Keith Harrison’s verse translation preserves the poem’s propulsion, formal patterning and mixture of splendour, menace and sly comedy without embalming it in imitation medieval English. At its heart, the story is a deep examination of masculine reputation: the gap between appearing fearless and actually being afraid, between the impossible purity demanded by chivalry and the compromised body required to perform it.

This uncommon illustrated edition gives the poem a suitably unruly visual life. Karin Calley and Arvid Göteson’s dense black-and-white images feel closer to carved wood, illuminated marginalia and underground printmaking than polite Arthuriana—ornamental, grotesque and alive with foliage, fabric and watching faces.

Black Willow Press fourth edition, 1993; first published by the Folio Society in 1983. Illustrated paperback with light rubbing, edgewear and cover creasing; internally clean.