One of the century's most challenging novels of ideas, The Fountainhead champions the cause of individualism through the story of a gifted young architect who defies the tyranny of conventional public opinion.

The struggle for personal integrity in a world that values conformity above creativity is powerfully illustrated through three characters: Howard Roarke, the genius who is resented because he creates purely for the delight of his own work and on no other terms; Gail Wynand, the newspaper mogul and self-made millionaire whose power was bought by sacrificing his ideals to the lowest common denominator of public taste; and Dominique Francon, the devastating beauty whose desperate search for meaning has been twisted, through despair, into a quest to destroy the single object of her desire: Howard Roarke.

Dramatic, poetic, and demanding, The Fountainhead remains one of the towering books on the contemporary intellectual scene.

Ayn Rand was born in Russia, graduated from the University of Leningrad, and in 1926 came to the United States where she was naturalized. Her first novel, We the Living, was published in 1936.