Undoubtedly, the adventure genre found its peak in the XNUMXth century. It is not a matter of comparing sales figures because the reading universe from that moment has nothing to do with the current one, but the truth is that the worldwide recognition of its own Henry Rider Haggard and others like Robert Louis Stevenson, authentic props of the genre, gives a good example of what that literature supposed that entered the unknown, in the last recesses of the esoteric world that science and technology still could not cover completely.
Both Stevenson and Haggard drank from narrative approaches originating in Jonathan Swift, only adjusted to the modernity of the moment and freed from the usual underground political charge that Swift used to address in the double reading of his works.
The point is, the adventure genre has never had a sweeter time. Trips to unknown, fantastic places in search of great mysteries that even addressed the morals of the time and challenged an evolutionary moment in technology with its obvious shortcomings.
The subgenre of the lost worlds, which still lingers from time to time in a world mapped from end to end and tracked by satellites and terminals of all kinds, found its greatest support in Stevenson's excellence and Haggard's profusion and liveliness. to launch the imaginary reader of those days to speculate.
Top 3 Recommended Books By Henry Rider Haggard
King Solomon's Mines
Haggard had a kind of influence with Africa similar to that felt years later by the writer isak dinesen. And there, from the open spaces of the most unknown Africa, Haggard also invited us to the fantastic adventure of the mines of King Solomon.
With the help of Allan Quatermain we enter the most jungle areas of the old continent to face a multitude of risks. Quatermain, as a modern man at the end of the XNUMXth century, faced as best he could the natural challenges, the threat of the savages ..., all to get hold of the greatest treasure in the world.
One of the most replicated adventures in many editions and in the cinema. A story that delights those readers with souls of travelers into danger. Available in many editions:
Ella
It often happens that the author of a well-known work can be buried by it. However, Haggard was able to construct new novels with the same solidity and charm as his great work. She is one of the most obvious cases.
The thematic twist is considerable in this novel that takes again the admired African settings of the author. But the journey of Leo and Horace in search of something more transcendent than a simple material treasure keeps the reader trapped.
She, that kind of goddess capable of ruling the soul of men but at the same time subjected to the darkness of the African jungle. What Leo and Horace discover will end up modifying the essence of their souls and even the very existence of humanity.
Moctezuma's daughter
Beyond the African continent in which Haggard found his particular vein to present his novels, pre-Columbian America also represented a narrative challenge for a writer like Haggard who loved adventure in the face of lost, remote, unknown worlds...
In this novel we meet Tomas Wingfield, an Englishman embarked on a Spanish ship to the new world at the beginning of the conquest. Finally lost after a shipwreck, the natives end up admiring him like a god.
In the development of the plot in which Tomas seeks above all his personal revenge, the author takes the opportunity to delve into the great enigmas of this civilization as well as the arrival of Hernán Cortés to the world of the Aztecs.
