Lord Foul's Bane is the first book in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever trilogy written by Stephen R. Donaldson, and published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston Publishing on July 12, 1978. It's followed by The Illearth War, also published in 1978. The novel tells the story of Thomas Covenant, a bitter outcast leper who is transported to the Land where the task of saving the world against Lord Foul is placed on his head. But Covenant refuses to believe any of it to be real, and takes the title of Unbeliever to hold on to his identity.