A good story surrounding characters who experience the hardships of being captured, and later finding they have changed following their being rescued. The end focuses more on redemption of the passengers of the Korosko.

Another iPhone Serial app book. I think this is maybe my first Sir Arthur Conan Doyle book (& it's not your typical one, which would involve Sherlock Holmes--will have to try one of those someday).

This is the first novel I read that is written by Arthur Conan Doyle, and it's just amazing, very poetic, written in a beautiful style, and it contains mesmerizing descriptions of the desert, some memorable characters, a great story of surviving desert marauders, and a glimmer of hope in a troubling world. A great adventure of survival out there in the desert of Egypt, though I have this nitpick concerning the racist terms and the stereotyped portrayal of Arabs (which is understandable, since it's a 19th century novel)...

Nevertheless, this is one of the best adventure novels set in the desert. I highly recommend it!

This book was an interesting read, partly because of the glimpses of some of the views of the time that it provided.

I bought this book autumn last year and have been meaning to read it. In the light of the terror attacks in Paris, I thought it would be a fitting tribute to read this book which is remarkably a reminder of the troubles our world faces today. After all, the pen is far mighter than the sword.

This story was penned in 1898 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and yet it could have been written last year, given the unfortunate relevancy of the story to today's troubled world. It focuses on a group of tourists who are travelling down the Nile. After many days of sailing down the Nile touring famous sites, they set out on one final tour of an historical site of interest before heading back up the Nile and home. Unfortunately for them they are in dangerous lands and the excursion party and the steamship Korosko are captured by those who wish to convert their hostages to Islam. The story then chronicles the captives ordeal and as they are taken out further into the desert their fate grows more perilous and each of them must face and overcome their own fears and prejudices if they are to survive.

This is a very good story of suspense, and the lush narrative description of the desert, and of their captors. And Doyle through the eyes of the hostages questions the prescene of the West in the Middle East. Not unlike today when such questions and concerns are still raised.

This story does make you think and in many ways Doyle was ahead of his time in his approach with this story. I have no doubt had it been written today it would have been in the running for a book prize or two, this story is one that we all should read as it is as relevant today as it was in 1898.

AKA A Desert Drama, interesting tale about some Brits and Americans captured in the desert and their resilience in a time of adversity.

Better than Sherlock Holmes!!

Peculiarly accurate description, from more than a century ago, of political and physical troubles generated by people of a certain religion…stuff that is happening today, 2013.

In this story, the reader is swept out of the placid stream of existence and dashed against the horrible jagged facts of life. And, where then, is the difference between fact and fiction…Doyle's fiction versus today's fact…today's fiction versus Doyle's Korosko fact?

"The nineteen century had its revenge upon the seventh."

The passengers of a tourist ship are taken prisoner by Muslims in the Egyptian desert. Shocking you say? Well taking place at the end of the 1800s it has the feeling that it could be taking place 100 years after.

Can't wait for Hollywood to make this a movie and replace the Muslims with neo-Nazis.

I enjoyed the story and the different twists and turns. very good job of showing how experiences can change people

Though it turns out to be less an adventure story than a morality tale, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Tragedy of the Korosko is a cracking little book. Just consider this plot summary from the blurb of my 2015 Alma Classics edition: "As a group of Western tourists travel down the Nile on the steamer Korosko towards the historical sites near Egypt's southern border, they are kidnapped by a marauding band of dervishes who demand their conversion to Islam." As the cliché goes, they don't make them like that anymore.

There is a sort of peculiar thrill in reading a book that would see Conan Doyle get police protection for life if he wrote it today, but, for all that, the book is remarkably even-handed when discussing the cultural clash between Christianity and Islam ("a great living power in the world, reactionary but tremendous" (pg. 73)). One or two of the stouter British characters deal in high-handed Victorianisms ("See here, dragoman! You tell that grey-bearded old devil that we know nothing about his cursed tinpot religion. Put it smooth when you translate it. Tell him that he cannot expect us to adopt it until we know what particular brand of rot it is that he wants us to believe." (pg. 84)), but the book as a whole is a sort of Socratic dialogue, with different characters arguing different viewpoints, not only on religion but on the "take-it-for-granted complacency" of the tourist trade (pg. 75) and the merits of the British imperial project.

Short enough to be read in a single sitting, the book has a sort of propulsive force that sees it overcome its natural flaws. The mix of classic African adventure and naked morality tale is interesting and the book doesn't outstay its welcome. Some of the characterization can be shallow, but at a perfectly acceptable level for something so short, and Conan Doyle's storytelling ability is always there to keep things firing. There is also a comic element to the story, though this proves to be charming rather than funny and probably betrays its magazine-serial origins. All in all, the Korosko is a stimulating oddity that deserves to be among the more-discussed of Conan Doyle's works.

RTF