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| Cover of the English translation of The Tigers of Mompracem |
Book Review
The Tigers of Mompracem (1900)
by Emilio Salgari
Replaces: Born in Exile by George Gissing
This famous Italian adventure novel by Emilio Salgari wasn't translated into English until 2008- just in time for inclusion onto the first revision of the 1001 Books list. Set in Malaysia in 1849, the tigers of the title are a band of pirates led by Sandokan, an erstwhile local noble who was deposed by the collusion between his local enemies and European allies. Sandokan falls in love with Lady Marianna Guillonk, the niece of the local representative of the British empire, and moves heaven and earth in his quest to retrieve her from the clutches of her uncle.
It makes sense to include the tigers as a diversity pick under the theory that Italian literature is underrepresented, but it's hard to make the case strictly on literary grounds- there is nothing "modernist" about the tigers except for the fact that the hero is a local, not a white, European.
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