I enjoyed this very Victorian read! Although full of very pompous & stiff upper lip Britishness, quite fun to read. Amazing how some policies mirror with today. A western tourist party are kidnapped whilst visiting Egypt & the kidnappers demand they convert to Islam

As thrilling and interesting as a sherlock novel.

I think I should stick to the Sherlock stories.

An often grim tale, written in the late 19th Century, of a group of European tourists in Egypt who are kidnapped by Dervishes.

The bad guys are Islamic fanatics whose methods and motivations remind a modern reader of ISIS, up to a tendency to destroy ancient monuments, as well as forcing people to choose between religious conversion and death. Some things remain the same across the decades.

Doyle includes a little bit of pro-imperialism propaganda in his prose, but his vivid descriptive power generate a real sense of tension and suspense throughout this short novel.

An entertaining adventure tale involving a kidnapping by "dervishes" during a trip up the Nile, the story features plenty of adventure, melodramatic suffering, some beautiful descriptions, and a pleasant variety of characters. It's made harder to enjoy by the highly bigoted imperialist attitudes of both the narrator and the (white) characters and its correspondingly cartoonish depictions of their Muslim captors.

El Korosko es el vapor inglés que iba por el Nilo río arriba el 13 de febrero de 1895, en la novela de sir Arthur Conan Doyle, paseando turistas ingleses, franceses y estadounidenses. Como es común en este tipo de novelas, dichos turistas van cargados de prejuicios, mal carácter y frases ingeniosas. Mientras miran los paisajes naturales y las viejas ruinas, se aproximan a los límites de los dominios europeos. Para ellos, Egipto es un atractivo papel tapiz en sus tardes de té. De hecho, no lo miran atentamente, es apenas un segundo plano para las remembranzas de sus mansiones llenas de jardines, es la oportunidad de sobrecogerse por un momento al pensar que allí, del otro lado del horizonte, comienza el país de lo ajeno. Pero aquel estremecimiento que parecía ser pasajero se cumple en esta historia, pues al llegar a los límites de su viaje, allá donde se alcanzan a ver siluetas amenazantes, son efectivamente secuestrados por un grupo de derviches y llevados a sus dominios con el fin de obtener un buen rescate por sus vidas. Por suerte, existen entre el grupo de derviches algunos fieles a los secuestrados. Uno de ellos, un derviche negro con la cara marcada de viruelas, se acerca hasta el grupo de cautivos para decirles: “Tippy Tilly”. ¿Qué es eso?, se pregunta el coronel Cochrane, uno de ellos. Luego de meditarlo, se dice: “Claro, en su chapurreo es lo más parecido a Egipty Artillery”. No mucho más allá llega el entendimiento de estos prisioneros por el mundo de sus captores. El líder de los derviches, Alí Wad Ibrahim, piensa que es demasiado trabajo llevar a estos cautivos a su ciudad si sus almas no valen nada. Así que les da la oportunidad de hablar una noche con el imán del grupo para que les hable de las ventajas del islam. Si después de esta conversación se convierten al islamismo, serán perdonados; en su defecto, serán fusilados. Esto sería lo más atractivo de la novela: los diálogos entre hombres mundanos del siglo XIX y la religión de Alá. Desafortunadamente, el novelista nos deja fuera estos conceptos, así que nos quedaremos sin saber qué se conversó en esa noche, aun cuando esas palabras no penetraron en el espíritu de los prisioneros, los cuales prefieren antes la muerte que abjurar de su religión. Mientras que a mí me pareció una lectura atractiva, documento para saber qué transformaciones ha tenido el horror por lo otro entre los europeos, a los contemporáneos de Conan Doyle seguramente les pareció algo decepcionante. Es una de las novelas escritas después de la muerte de Sherlock Holmes en las cataratas del Niágara, en 1893, y su resurrección en 1901, en la novela El sabueso de los Baskervilles. Sus novelas se vendían, pero secretamente se añoraba al famoso detective y al doctor Watson. El autor no lo dice, pero hasta estos turistas se aburren en las aguas del Nilo pensando que les gustaría que hubiera más aventuras de Sherlock Holmes…

Arthur Conan Doyle. La tragedia del Korosko / The tragedy of Korosko (1898), trad. Francisca Trepat.Barcelona, Laertes, 1986.

I read the 1898 edition. More of a curiosity than anything else, this Conan Doyle adventure tale is illustrated by Sidhey Paget (more famous for illustratng the Sherlock Holmes stries). Full of suspense, the book is very much of its time.

This is the compelling story of a small group of European and American tourists cruising along the Nile in the late 1800's. They are kidnapped by a brutal group of Islamic terrorists, who insist they convert or die. Written by the author of the Sherlock Holmes series, the personality development of each character as they go through this trauma is excellent.

This book is definitely a product of its times and there are a few bits here and there which were borderline racist, but it was also a cracking story of intrigue and adventure. Essentially, we follow a bunch of holidaymakers who’ve travelled to Egypt as they’re hijacked by camel-riding Arabs who plan to sell them into slavery and who give them the choice of converting to Islam or being put to the sword.

Overall, probably not worth reading unless you’re a Conan Doyle fan, but I was pretty happy with it and plan to read everything he wrote. Getting there!

2 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
A group of tourists on a pleasure cruise down the Nile set out to visit a local sight and get into trouble.

Review
I’m a fan of Conan Doyle, and think it’s a shame most people don’t get beyond the Sherlock Holmes books. However, A Desert Drama: Being the Tragedy of the Korosko is not the book with which to convince anyone.

I read this in the same day as Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. Both books make use of ‘the n word’. However, Sawyer, despite being the older book by 30 years or so, comes across as a fairly innocent product of its times – the word is used and class distinctions are clear, but, in part because of its juvenile viewpoint, they’re more observed than intended. Doyle’s Desert Drama, however, comes across a fairly bigoted. It’s an adult adventure, but comes across as shallower than Twain’s children’s book, and more bigoted. It manages to insult a whole host of people and religions without half trying.

I don’t know anything about the provenance of the book, but I hope that Doyle wrote it without trying. Certainly he doesn’t seem to have put much effort into … really any part of it. The characters are stock romantic drama figures who pretty much play the expected roles. Doyle’s more ready to kill people off than you might expect, but heroes are heroes, villains are villains, whites and Europeans have natural virtue, etc. The plot moves smoothly enough, but there’s not much to it, and it’s hard to generate a lot of interest. Not boring, necessarily, but predictable and at times offensive.

Unless you really, really, want to read all of Doyle’s books, skip this one.

Very good short adventure story

This tells the story of a group of travellers in the late 1800s and their experience with a band of Muslim raiders. Arthur Conan Doyle's explanations of the situation and his analyses of the methods and motivations of the bandits and of the others involved is relevant to a great many difficulties people are facing worldwide today. This short story could be read and appreciated by millions, but it never will be due to moral cowardice and that scab on our culture called "political correctness" .

More of an expose of relation between nations than a mystery. The other side of Conan Doyle which gives reader historical insight. Clever mystery components.