If Indiana Jones were Victorian -- and less with the sexy archaeologist and more with the stuffy imperialist -- then you'd have something resembling She. Basically a gun-toting university professor and his "golden boy" ward journey to Africa on the trail of a 2,000-year old quest to find the lost city of "mysterious Kor" and its immortal goddess-queen. Wackiness insues. It says something that Rider Hagger is grouped with British adventure writers like Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. Basically, his work is all about affirming the white, intellectual male ego at the height of the British Empire. Not to say that nothing worthwhile comes out of She. Read this novel and you'll likely find the roots of every adventure-quest story you've come across. Remember those Alan Quartermaine movies, King Solomon's Mines and The Lost City of Gold, with Sharon Stone and that Richard dude? Yup, that there's the work of Hagger (the books, of course, not the films). So if you're feeling nostalgic this might be worth a go. Plus the monkey thing is just too funny.
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