Emilio Salgari
The Tiger Is Still Alive!
Paola Irene Galli Mastrodonato author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Published:5th Jun '24
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Who created the most famous Southeast Asian hero during the heyday of imperialism and colonialism? Who inaugurated with The Mysteries of the Black Jungle over a century long link uniting the Italian imaginary to the Indian one? Who envisioned the most celebrated interracial love stories of world literature, those between Sandokan, leader of the Tigers of Mompracem, and Marianna, the Pearl of Labuan, between Tremal-Naik, the Bengali snake catcher, and Ada, the Virgin of Kali’s temple at the time of the British Raj? Who defined the Caribbean as a symbolic trope of plunder and rebellion through the melancholic viewpoint of the Black Corsair and the forsaken love for his enemy’s daughter? Who created Yanez de Gomera, a most famous Portuguese hero, and the imperfect voice of white anti-colonialism?
It was Italy’s great adventure novelist, Emilio Salgari (Verona, 1862 – Turin, 1911). From the Mahdi’s revolt in Sudan to the African slave trade, from the Philippine insurgency to the Mediterranean at war between Turks and Christians, and to ancient Egypt, Salgari’s breath-taking plots, together with his indigenous heroes and heroines in Vietnam, Thailand, Venezuela, Arctic Canada, the American Far West, the Chinese diaspora, deeply challenge canonical colonialist representations by contemporary Victorian authors like Conrad, Kipling, and Forster.
Galli Mastrodonato’s monograph is an extraordinary work, written with extraordinary passion and no less extraordinary competence, destined to remain a reference text for anyone dealing with Emilio Salgari and his role in Italian modern letters. It is also a work which conclusively proves that Emilio Salgari has not only been the major Italian author of adventure fiction, worth to be included in the Pantheon of “high literature”, but also an absolutely unique example of a counter-Orientalist fiction-writer in the age of triumphant imperialism. -- Michelguglielmo Torri, University of Turin * Polish Journal of English Studies *
If a writer like Emilio Salgari could offer us something beyond the prevailing worldview of his era, we should have confidence that our own epoch has—and will continue to produce—progressive, visionary writers. In this sense, the resisting tiger will always live on, as Galli Mastrodonato’s lengthy labour of love compels us to believe. * Cha Journal *
... it is easy to write entertaining stories in which the underdog wins when there is no real threat to imperialism; the latter still runs its course. But if today, we are still talking about Pigafetta and Salgari, it doesn’t just mean that their reputations and relevance have resisted over the centuries. It means that there is still the need, more than ever, for the resistance to win. * CounterPunch.org *
ISBN: 9781683934080
Dimensions: 237mm x 159mm x 30mm
Weight: 803g
442 pages