The year is (presumably) 1884. Sir Henry Curtis contacts the adventurer Allan Quatermain and explains that his brother has gone missing in Africa while looking for the fabled diamond mines of King Solomon. Sir Henry has a 300 year old map and a lot of money (plus a share in any profits) which he is willing to give to Quatermain in exchange for his help in finding the mines and his brother. Quatermain agrees to help, and with Captain Good joining the party, the three go to Africa. After many hardships they arrive in the unexplored region of Kukuanaland only to find a lot of tribal trouble. Will they survive, find the mines, get the diamonds and return to England as fabulously wealthy men?
King Solomon's Mines is an unashamedly boy's own adventure. Indeed, Rider Haggard dedicates the book "To all the big and little boys who read it". As we have come to expect from such tales, the action is fast-paced, the next crisis is never far away and there are certainly a lot of them. However, I wouldn't be the first to say that King Solomon's Mines suffers from it's own success. There have been so many imitations of Haggard's tropes in more recent books and film that what was once novel is now cliche.
So what attractions does this book have for the modern reader? Firstly, there is the masterful storytelling. Quatermain is the narrator of the story, and his voice is measured, assured but capable of becoming lively and comic. He has an eye for detail and a talent for description, and he is able judge situations and temperaments with great accuracy.
Secondly, there is Haggard's treatment of his themes and characters. We must remember that he was writing in Victorian times and that sentiments were different then. Even so, he still has Quatermain condemning the sentiments that underlie the word 'nigger' well before political correctness condemned it, yet he blithely uses 'Cafir' often and without any prejudicial overtones (these words are in the text, folks).
The native Africans are not portrayed by one overmastering stereotype but are still stereotyped. The sympathetic ones tend to be loyal, even to the point of being (literally) self-sacrificing; the bad ones are violent, even to the point of being psychopathic. But the one we really get to know well, Umbopa, is an unstereotypically complex and challenging personality on par with any of the Englishmen he travels with.
Controversially, Haggard inserts a blossoming inter-racial romance in his story. Of course, it is doomed by the workings of a deus ex machina. Let us not forget that it was not that long ago that the inter-racial romance in The King and I was killed by the scriptwriter before it could be consummated. Or that one had to be on the Starship Enterprise in order to be involved in television's first inter-racial kiss. So hats off to Haggard for being way ahead of his time.
I enjoyed this book even though adventure is not my genre of choice. It can be enjoyed for itself, being a rollicking tale, or for its being a testament to times and attitudes that now seem so remote.
King Solomon's Mines was first published in 1885. I read an e-book version.
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