The Fountainhead

Book excerpt: The Fountainhead, one of the most thought-provoking novels of the twentieth century, advocates individualism through the story of a gifted young architect who rejects the tyranny of conventional public opinion. Three personalities vividly depict the struggle for personal integrity in a world that prioritises conformity above creativity: 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 affection.