In the first section of 'Sauron Defeated' Christopher Tolkien completes his fascinating study of 'The Lord of the Rings'. Beginning with Sam's rescue of Frodo from the Tower of Cirith Ungol, and giving a very different account of the Scouring of the Shire, this section ends with versions of the hitherto unpublished 'Epilogue', in which, years after the departure of Bilbo and Frodo from the Grey Havens, Sam attempts to answer his children's questions.
The second section is an edition of 'The Notion Club Papers', now published for the first time. These mysterious papers discovered in the early years of the twentieth-first century, report the discussions of an Oxford club in the years 1986-7, in which, after a number of topics, the centre of interest turns to the legends of Atlantis, the strange communications received by other members of the club from the past, and the violent irruption of the legend into the North-west of Europe. Closely associated with the 'Papers' is a new version of the 'Drowning of Anadune', which constitutes the third part of the book. At this time the language of the Men of the West, 'Adunaic', was first devised, and the book concludes with an account of its structure provided by Arundel Lowdham, a member of the Notion Club, who learned it in his dreams.