Download She: A History of Adventure AudioBook Free
At one point in his moody, erotic, and barbarous romance of She, H. Rider Haggard puts into the mouth of his narrator, Horace L. Holly, the observation that her account sounded like some extraordinary invention of the speculative brain. That, accurately, is what She is: an extremely marvelously inventive account, combining an amazing variety of what should be absolutely implausible ideas into a textile that constantly feels as though truth. Even though we know that there was never a diabolical, immortal, fantastically beautiful white queen ruling more than a barbarous tribe of cannibals in the center of what is now Mozambique, it is hard to withstand the impulse to pull the map and muse about where she might have been hidden. Even as get to know Her, H. Rider Haggard means that the mystery only deepens. We see her dispense cruel, swift justice; we see her indulge murderous passion; we see her show superhuman devotion; we see her speak from the wisdom collected in her 20 decades of life. We are able to never be certain just who or what she is. We see her through the eyes of Haggard's protagonist, Holly - a Cambridge don absolutely out of his depth in a crazy and savage world, absolutely English to the main, which is what perceives him through in the long run. Bitter, misogynistic, and even more than mildly racist, he's also a devoted father to his followed boy, Leo - who turns out to be the carrier of an unbelievable destiny - and an unusually identified survivor. We've no trouble believing in Holly, and thus we suspend disbelief and recognize his tale. There was a strong streak of racism and anti-Semitism in Victorian England, and Haggard was not confirmation against it. We've not modified or omitted such passages but rather have gone them as Haggard composed them. We do well to remember that just as Haggard fell prey to such thinking every once in awhile, so too can we, despite all our modern enlightenment.
