Emilio Salgari

Eye of the Tiger - Survivor

Emilio Salgari (1862-1911)
(Tr.Spa-Eng from a review in Shvoong)

 This great Italian novelist was born in Verona, Italy, on August 21, 1862. His life and literary production has been shrouded in the mists between reality and legend. The truth is that he was the son of a merchant and that at the age of 17 he joined the Technical and Nautical Royal Institute Paolo Sarpi in Venice where he did not graduate because his marks were dreadful. However, this did not disappoint him, and this failed experience came in useful for him to locate the maritime environment in which most of his stories would be developed.

 He often boasted about knowing the world from the Strait of Berinhg to the Polynesian Islands. He liked to be called Captain Salgari and once one of his editors doubted it and he had to fight a duel to keep his word. He invented long journeys by the seven seas and the continents describing himself as a daring adventurer and a man hardened in dangerous and untamed operations in the sea. As far as we know he never left Italy and made only some trips across the Adriatic Sea.

 His first work: "The Savages of Papua" was published in 1883. Then it comes "The Tiger of Malaysia", "The Tigers of Mompracem," and finally "Sandokan". Henceforth he wrote over 100 novels and short stories. His mother died in 1887 and his father commits suicide two years later. These episodes of his life would mark him forever. In 1890, he married the love of his life Ida Peruzzi, with whom he had four sons (Romeo, Omar, Fátima and Nadir).
 Critics have said that in his works there is a deep "contempt for civilization", since their characters are adventurers, hunters, pirates, gold prospectors, etc and are not city dwellers. They have to overcome obstacles that wild nature impose upon them. They are aggressive, brave, and wrestlers men, as they have been thus shaped by the environment in which they move. They are prototypes of the human being but also noble, so many generations of young people have found in these adventures not only a way of escape and leisure but ideals of life.
 Burdened by debts and the sudden madness of his wife, Salgari commits suicide in 1911. Works: Sandokan, The Tiger of Malaysia, Yañez' Revenge, The two rivals, Captain Tempesta, Morgan, A drama in the Pacific Ocean, The Horrors of Siberia, The Pearl of the Red River.