King Solomon's Mines (Vintage Classics) - Softcover

Haggard, H. Rider

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099582821 ISBN 13: 9780099582823

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2013

Synopsis

A Victorian Indiana Jones, Allan Quatermain triumphs over deserts, snowy mountains, tribal warfare, and witches, and unearths the mythical treasure of King Solomon's mines. Includes four additional short stories featuring Quatermain.

"This faithful but unpretending record of a remarkable adventure is hereby respectfully dedicated by the narrator to all the big boys and little boys who read it. I offer apologies for my blunt way of writing. I can but say in excuse of it that I am more accustomed to handle a rifle than a pen. This is the strange history of our journey into the heart of Kukuanaland; a trek into the interior of the dark continent to find a lost friend and discover the diamond mines of King Solomon. In the course of a long life of shaves, I never had such shaves as those which I had recently experienced."  —Allan Quatermain, of Durban, Natal, Gentleman

About this title

About the Author:

H. Rider Haggard (1856–1925) was bet by his brother that he could not write as good a novel as Stevenson's Treasure Island. The result of this bet was Haggard's 1885 book, King Solomon's Mines. It became a runaway bestseller, so that Haggard was able to leave London and concentrate on his writing.

Review:

"One of the great page-turners in English literature" -- John Sutherland * Guardian * "I can distinctly remember handling the book as if it might somehow give me, a boy in Africa, magical access to the African adventures it contained. It still does now. I need only pick up this book and, like the door to Solomon's treasure chamber, a mass of stone rises from the floor and vanishes into the rock above" -- Giles Foden * Guardian *

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0099582821
• ISBN 13: 9780099582823
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344