The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead is a novel by the Russian-born American writer Ayn Rand, published in 1943. Its central character is an architect, Howard Roark.

Roark is expelled from architecture school and turns down work that would require him to copy historical styles, and the novel follows him through years of near-poverty while his contemporaries take the safer route. Peter Keating, his former classmate, becomes a success by giving clients what they want and asking Roark for help behind the scenes. Against him stands Ellsworth Toohey, a critic who builds influence by promoting fashionable mediocrity, and Gail Wynand, a tabloid publisher who can shape public opinion and knows exactly what that is worth. Roark's affair with Dominique Francon, who believes that the world will always destroy anyone who refuses to compromise, is the book's other argument. Rand writes long set-piece conversations in which her ideas are stated directly, and the plot exists to test them against people who have chosen differently.

The novel was her first major literary success, and its principal characters are arranged as a set of positions rather than as a study of ordinary life.