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daja57's review against another edition
2.0
Not so much a novel, more a collection of tales about a District Commissioner in Africa during colonial rule.
Fundamentally racist, it portrays the Africans as childish, ignorant and bellicose who must be ruled using corporal and capital punishment; white people who seek to educate the Africans and who see them as having rights are frequently murdered; Sanders keeps order with soldiers and machine guns. The implicit values espoused in this book are horrid and make it difficult to read.
The author, Edgar Wallace, was a hugely prolific and hugely popular writer of thrillers from 1905 until his death in 1932; Sanders of the Rivers (written 1911) inspired a series of works. His other popular works were the Four Just Men series; he also wrote the original screenplay for King Kong. His immense popularity suggests that he tapped into the zeitgeist of the time. It is instructive to read books such as this if only to understand the values of popular culture at the time and to be thankful at how far we have come from that in only just over one hundred years, even if we have not yet progressed far enough.
I also found it interesting that Wallace adopted short sentences, short paragraphs and a very direct tell-don't-show (past tense third person) style.
Wallace spent some time in South Africa as a soldier and journalist, so presumably he had some background on which to base his stories. His books are mostly out of print in the UK, presumably because they are too racist to publish.
Fundamentally racist, it portrays the Africans as childish, ignorant and bellicose who must be ruled using corporal and capital punishment; white people who seek to educate the Africans and who see them as having rights are frequently murdered; Sanders keeps order with soldiers and machine guns. The implicit values espoused in this book are horrid and make it difficult to read.
The author, Edgar Wallace, was a hugely prolific and hugely popular writer of thrillers from 1905 until his death in 1932; Sanders of the Rivers (written 1911) inspired a series of works. His other popular works were the Four Just Men series; he also wrote the original screenplay for King Kong. His immense popularity suggests that he tapped into the zeitgeist of the time. It is instructive to read books such as this if only to understand the values of popular culture at the time and to be thankful at how far we have come from that in only just over one hundred years, even if we have not yet progressed far enough.
I also found it interesting that Wallace adopted short sentences, short paragraphs and a very direct tell-don't-show (past tense third person) style.
Wallace spent some time in South Africa as a soldier and journalist, so presumably he had some background on which to base his stories. His books are mostly out of print in the UK, presumably because they are too racist to publish.
sarah42783's review
3.0
This is the first "non crime novel" by Wallace that I read and it is definitely not PC by today's standards! Still, it is enjoyable and quite humorous. Most of all it gives great insight into the mindset and behaviour of Europeans in Africa at the time. A very good read!
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