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Sandokan: The Tigers of Mompracem

Emilio Salgari,

Nico Lorenzutti (Translator)

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Feb 08, 2020 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: zchallenge-eu, europe, author-man, z-read-gelesen-2020, author-hybridnation, a-reviewed, publdate-19thc, genre-bestseller, in-italian, europe-italy

This started out as super fun. Many swashes were buckled, and multiple buckles were swashed. The story is delightfully and unashamedly pulp of the 1880s. The author repeats most words sufficiently often for me to learn quite a bit of an Italian pirate lexicon, from keel and scimitar to starboard, steamship, wake and topsail. Highlights are the starting chapters with their vivid description of thunderstorms, the first battle with the English battleship and the epic fight between a panther and a " This started out as super fun. Many swashes were buckled, and multiple buckles were swashed. The story is delightfully and unashamedly pulp of the 1880s. The author repeats most words sufficiently often for me to learn quite a bit of an Italian pirate lexicon, from keel and scimitar to starboard, steamship, wake and topsail. Highlights are the starting chapters with their vivid description of thunderstorms, the first battle with the English battleship and the epic fight between a panther and a "quadrumano" orang-outan.

Sandokan, the pirate hero is truly heroic: fierce, brooding, manly, swarthy-hued, with his turban, long black locks and sabre in the front of his sash with a kris in the back. His trusty sidekick is the wily Portuguese Yanez. So far, so Karl May. And Germans like to call author Emilio Salgari the Karl May of Italy because, like Karl May, he was enormously popular and wrote much-loved and still-well-known adventure stories set in far flung locations (in this case Malaysia) that he never visited and shamelessly invented.

Where Sandokan differs from Karl May's heroes of the Wild West, Winnetou and Old Shatterhand, is in the much reduced slashiness value. At first I was intrigued by the heterosexual romance introduced into the macho society of the pirates. Sandokan's metamorphosis from bloodthirsty battle brute to love smitten and weeping "amante" was interesting, and the prose totally over the top with much beating of hearts, boilings of blood and sighing.

But after a while, it all became rather tedious and repetitive. Unlike Old Shatterhand's love interest who gets conveniently killed off to make way for the true epic love between the two male heroes, Marianna sticks around and is the 19th century's worst example of white, blonde, insipid, adoring womanhood. They attack the house; they escape; their boat gets smashed; they attack the house; he sighs over her; they get separated; he is captured; he eacapes; he sighs; their boat gets smashed again -- and so on and so forth. The action highlights were too few and far between, with too much dialogue and exposition filler.

I was thrilled to be reading in the original Italian again and to tackle such a classic of pulp fiction. But ultimately it was unsatisfying. Still, I may now find the 1970s Italian TV series, starring Bollywood actor Kabir Bedi as the pirate Sandokan, the Tiger of Malaysia. To this day, instagram erupts with happy birthday Sandokan wishes on the occasion of Kabir Bedi's birthday, and Bedi certainly looks totally the hot part in his turban and scowl.

Read for my European Union Challenge 2020.

Format: Badly formatted, paragraph-less freebie from Gutenberg.

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Nov 20, 2012 Annie marked it as 1001-list

Jan 04, 2013 Mirja marked it as to-read

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you

Aug 07, 2013 Tanya marked it as to-read

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Jan 27, 2019 Monica W. marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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