Ayn Rand’s fiction continues to have a tremendous impact, with hundreds of thousands of copies sold each year. The following provides synopses of her fiction. For more details, be sure to visit the Ayn Rand’s Fiction section of the Ayn Rand Institute’s Web site.

Ayn Rand’s masterpiece. It integrates the basic elements of an entire philosophy into a highly complex, yet dramatically compelling plot—set in a near future U.S.A. whose economy is collapsing as a result of the mysterious disappearance of leading innovators and industrialists. The theme is “the role of the mind in man’s existence and, as corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest.”

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The story of an innovator—architect Howard Roark—and his battle against the tradition-worshipping establishment. Its theme is “individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in man’s soul; the psychological motivations and the basic premises that produce the character of an individualist or a collectivist.” Ayn Rand presented here for the first time her projection of the ideal man. Roark’s independence, self-esteem and integrity have inspired millions of readers for more than half a century.

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This novelette depicts a world of the future, so collectivized that all indications of individualism have vanished from the culture. Anthem’s theme is “the meaning and glory of man’s ego.”

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Set in Soviet Russia, this is Ayn Rand’s first and most autobiographical novel. Its theme is “the individual against the state, the supreme value of a human life and the evil of the totalitarian state that claims the right to sacrifice it.”

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This collection includes the first fiction Ayn Rand ever sold—the synopsis of an original 1932 screenplay, “Red Pawn”. It also contains unpolished, but charming short stories which she wrote in the late 1920s and early 1930s while she was still learning English, and mature works such as the stage plays Think Twice and Ideal and scenes cut from the published edition of The Fountainhead.

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Published together for the first time, here are Ayn Rand’s three compelling stage plays. Written in 1933, and a Broadway success in 1935, Night of January 16th is presented here in its definitive, final revised text—a superb dramatic objectification of Ayn Rand’s vision of human strength and weakness, a play famous for the author’s refusal to prearrange a dramatized verdict, leaving the solution to the audience. Also included are two of Rand’s unproduced plays: Think Twice (1939), a philosophical murder mystery, and Ideal (1934), the author’s bitter indictment of people’s willingness to betray their highest values, symbolized by a Hollywood goddess seemingly fleeing the authorities.

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This play is a murder trial abounding in plot twists and original devices. The play has two different endings available—to reflect the actual verdict of a jury selected each performance from the audience.

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Edited by Gary Hull and Leonard Peikoff

The Ayn Rand Reader combines, for the first time in one volume, extensive excerpts from all of Ayn Rand’s novels (Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, We the Living and Anthem) and her nonfiction work. The fiction excerpts present her dramatic, man-glorifying universe. The nonfiction excerpts explain Objectivism’s fundamental ideas, such as reason, rational selfishness and laissez-faire capitalism. For example, Ayn Rand’s essay “Man’s Rights” is used to explain the foundations of individual rights and capitalism. The Ayn Rand Reader is recommended both to readers new to Ayn Rand and to those already familiar with her work.

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