I don't feel very much in mood to write review about that guy Emilio Salgari - author and creator of Sandokan. Salgari's legend as explorer, adventurer, and writer knew no bounds. By the 1950s he was the bestselling Italian author worldwide. Dante Alighieri was number 2. Yet critics said that Salgari was mentally deranged. His wife actress Ida Peruzzi got dementia in 1900s and Salgari with his family could hardly meet their ends. By 1910/1911 wife was committed and Salgari himself made suicide. These are facts from his biography while Wikipedia gives inadequate information. Best source on the Net is ROH PRESS at http://www.rohpress.com/salgari.html
Let me try to shuffle this material a bit. We've got here in our country a large array of translations from Italian Emilio Salgari. Those books appeared firstly in the 1920s and 1930s - they were handsomely illustrated and were paragon for adventure literature. For me, as a schoolboy, those hard to find assets were precious. Since Star Wars series were non-existent what else could be opulent for teenager. It was Indian actor Kabir Bedi as Sandokan who gained greatest cinematic fame. He was as popular as Karl May's hero and some other heroes from American Westerns that I couldn't differentiate well. But we were happy and growing up, and those were socialist times clean and uneventful otherwise.
On the parochial side Sandokan's role as cultural phenomenon is limited. If you ask someone from South-East Asia about Sandokan, be it Malaysian or Thai or else, and he had hardly heard of that cult hero. Sandokan appears to be imaginary and fictional creation - a Raja rebel against English and Dutch colonialists in middle of 19th century, sometime between 1849 to 1889. Mompracem, the island-fortress of Sandokan, is non-existent nowadays. On the map, you can see on that latitude the Labuan island which is north offshore Borneo and east of Brunei Sultanate. Now comes the catch, did ever Salgari in his life was seafarer to those places?
Salgari claims in one of his authorized novels that he was there in 1879-1881 for two years. Tremal Naik hired him from Bombay as captain for one of Sandokan's praho (light ship). Salgari willingly served as pirate, he lived with the Tigres of Mompracem and during one of his raids they caught an English ship. On that ship, there was an Englishwoman (called Eva Stevenson, the would be Marianne) that conceded with the pirates and became Salgari's sweetheart. They further continued to live in action but once were tracked in the jungle. Eva died there of tropical fever, while Captain Salgari escaped and was saved by Portugese merchant ship. So it appears that the author himself was prototype for Yanez de Gomera.
It gets too long a story to continue now. You can check in various sources for synopsis of Sandokan novels. I have read those books in confused order but you can make a hubris for oneself. Good luck ...
Let me try to shuffle this material a bit. We've got here in our country a large array of translations from Italian Emilio Salgari. Those books appeared firstly in the 1920s and 1930s - they were handsomely illustrated and were paragon for adventure literature. For me, as a schoolboy, those hard to find assets were precious. Since Star Wars series were non-existent what else could be opulent for teenager. It was Indian actor Kabir Bedi as Sandokan who gained greatest cinematic fame. He was as popular as Karl May's hero and some other heroes from American Westerns that I couldn't differentiate well. But we were happy and growing up, and those were socialist times clean and uneventful otherwise.
On the parochial side Sandokan's role as cultural phenomenon is limited. If you ask someone from South-East Asia about Sandokan, be it Malaysian or Thai or else, and he had hardly heard of that cult hero. Sandokan appears to be imaginary and fictional creation - a Raja rebel against English and Dutch colonialists in middle of 19th century, sometime between 1849 to 1889. Mompracem, the island-fortress of Sandokan, is non-existent nowadays. On the map, you can see on that latitude the Labuan island which is north offshore Borneo and east of Brunei Sultanate. Now comes the catch, did ever Salgari in his life was seafarer to those places?
Salgari claims in one of his authorized novels that he was there in 1879-1881 for two years. Tremal Naik hired him from Bombay as captain for one of Sandokan's praho (light ship). Salgari willingly served as pirate, he lived with the Tigres of Mompracem and during one of his raids they caught an English ship. On that ship, there was an Englishwoman (called Eva Stevenson, the would be Marianne) that conceded with the pirates and became Salgari's sweetheart. They further continued to live in action but once were tracked in the jungle. Eva died there of tropical fever, while Captain Salgari escaped and was saved by Portugese merchant ship. So it appears that the author himself was prototype for Yanez de Gomera.
It gets too long a story to continue now. You can check in various sources for synopsis of Sandokan novels. I have read those books in confused order but you can make a hubris for oneself. Good luck ...