Review Excerpt:

In the medieval epic Gawain and the Green Knight, a monstrous knight, all in green, appears at King Arthur's Camelot. Anyone there may chop off his head, if, a year later, the green knight may do the same to him. Of all Arthur's brave knights, only Gawain will take up his apparently fatal challenge. The Green Knight combines several motifs from older folk tales, and this challenge to Gawain, apparently based on a ninth century irish epic, has been called "The Beheading Game."