Anyone read Emilio Salgari?

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

A friend of mine handed me a copy of a book called Sandokan: The Tigers of Mompracem. It's an oldschool 19th/early 20th century adventure novel...the type that Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne were famous for writing. I LOVE these types of old-school swashbucklers, so I was game to try it out.

Now, I had previously been somewhat familiar with Salgari before when I learned that Che Guevara was a BIG fan of his novels. Che had apparently read over 50 of Salgari's books and even read them to his children at night.

After having read a ways, I'm starting to see why. The one thing that probably separates Salgari from many of the other old-school adventure writers was his strong anti-imperialism. This is very refreshing, especially when you consider the fact that most of his work was published during the era of the "white man's burden". I can see how this trait would appeal to El Che...not to mention the fact that, like all great adventure writers, Salgari can write a ripping good yarn.

So has anyone else read Salgari? Although he seems to be almost completely unknown here in the english-speaking world, he's apparently very widely read in both Italy and in the Spanish-speaking world.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Went and bought a copy of The Black Corsair, another book by Salgari. It's another famous novel by Salgari, again talking about pirates but this time actually takes place in the Caribbean during the 'golden age' of piracy. It even features the real life Captain Henry Morgan!

[Red Commissar]

I never heard of him. I'll try to read it one day I guess (maybe I'll find a copy in the library or an epub, failing that a second-hand store if I really want it), but of all the books which is a good one to start with?

[Yuppie Grinder]

Sounds dope. I love pulpy stuff.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

There's only one publishing house that sell's any of Salgari's books in english, and that's ROH Press (http://rohpress.com/ebooks.htm).

But if you go to the bottom of the page you'll see they have free text files of his (numerous) works in the original Italian (and also see how awesome book covers used to be back in the day).

On the Che connection, the website says:


"As a boy Che was a huge fan; he read 62 of Mr. Salgari’s adventures. His biographer Paco Taibo went so far as to say that Che’s antimperialism was salgarian in origin. Whether that’s true or not can be debated by others, what we do know is that Che, the revolutionary, the idealist, used to read Mr. Salgari’s books aloud to his daughter Hilda, passing on his favorite stories."