Product Description

'My empire is of the imagination.' These are the words of Ayesha, the mysterious white queen of a Central African tribe, whose dread title, 'She-who-must-be-obeyed', testifies to her undying beauty and magical powers; but they serve equally well to describe the hold of her author, Henry Rider Haggard, on generations of readers. Writing 'at white heat', and in the flush of success after the publication of King Solomon's Mines, Haggard drew again on his knowledge of Africa and of ancient legends, but also on something deeper and more disturbing. To the Englishmen who journey through shipwreck, fever, and cannibals to her hidden realm, 'She' is the goal of a quest bequeathed to them two thousand years before; to Haggard's readers, 'She' is the embodiment of one of the most potent and ambivalent figures of Western mythology, a female who is both monstrous and desirable - and, without question, deadlier than the male.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23061 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Customer Reviews

Ripping good yarn
I bought this book for my summer holiday, I had a detective book, some heavy stuff and wanted a classic, moreover, I always loved that great studio Hammer Films version of She with Peter Cushing, Ursula Andres & Co, and the good looking one (no-one can remember his name). I wasn't disappointed from the first page I was really gripped as this is simply a great story, it has mystery, adventure and a hidden city, it has glamour and sex appeal and history. I won't go into the story as if you haven't seen the film, watch it its a real laugh and a great way to spend a rainy sunday afternoon and if you haven't read the book read the other reviews which give an overview. To be honest the book is better than the movie as the characters are much more etched out in particular that of She, who we discover is a great intellectual (no doubt having watched all that history from afar) and is so stunningly beautiful that she wanders around covered with a sheet the whole time and the narrator we discover is a man of numerous and varied Freudian hang-ups about women. As a history graduate I also found the writing style most interesting, its very precise and more formal than books of today. The book and in particular the views of the narrator allow an insight into another time, when Britain ruled the world, when every square inch of the our world wasn't visible to the CIA via satellite, when there was the lure of adventure and discovery. On the other hand this was also a world when the British had a stiff upper lip, when foreign people were there to be dominated and conquered as savages, when women were not considered intellectually equal to men (hence She is somewhat out of the ordinary) and when an English gentleman did not have to earn his living so could gaunt off around the world. For example our narrator is seriously worried that She is so intelligent she could rule the world, and, imagine the horror of our English gentleman if the British empire risked being replaced on the world stage. So if you want to get into the mind set of Mr. Victorian empire man this is not a bad start and its a good read to boot.

So as I said this is a great adventure yarn, what with cannibals, hidden cities, darkest Africa and so on, but, can be read on other levels. I read it in 2 days on the beach and was gripped, then I gave it to my sister who also read from start to finish. So forget the classic literature title its just a good story. The only other comment I had is that this version which I purchased from Amazon has quite poor quality paper and very small print so that even if you have the slightest bad vision you will be staring very hard at the pages! so be warned.

Quite terrifying in places
This is a gripping read, quite a horrific and violent novel, much more so than the famous film starring Ursula Andress and Peter Cushing. While the overall plot and names of the characters are the same, there are many other differences, particularly in the character of the narrator Holly (the Peter Cushing character), who in the book is hairy and ugly (nicknamed "the Baboon" by Billali) and so strong that at one point he quite graphically crushes two people to death with his bare hands. There is also a lot of dialogue between Holly and She, discussing philosophy and history in a way that could probably not have been commercially realised on film. The book delivers quite a strong emotional impact and is well worth reading. (The only note of caution I would add is that, as a novel of its time, the characters hold assumptions about the racial superiority of the white man that we do not today, which results in some slightly jarring comments early on in the novel.)

Exciting Adventure!
Victorian adventure novels often got bogged down in descriptive detail that made them serve a secondary purpose as travelogues. She fits into that model rather nicely with great amounts of detail about the imaginary African tribe of the Amahaggers. Pared down, the Amahaggers enhance the main story in this version.

The book opens as Horace Holly's dying friend begs Horace to take on the task of raising the friend's five-year-old son and preparing him for a challenge when he becomes twenty-five. Since Horace is an honest, hard-working sort and the position pays well, it is an easy decision. Horace and the boy, Leo, quickly become close, and Leo treats him like a favorite uncle.

On Leo's twenty-fifth birthday, they open a mysterious chest that Leo's father has left in Horace's care. Eventually, this reveals an ancient story from Leo's family written on a potshard. On the potshard, there seems to be information about the potential for discovering the secret of eternal life. This requires a trek to Africa. Along the way, Leo falls gravely ill but they are rescued by the Amahaggers who have ordered by She-who-is-to-be-obeyed not to hurt them.

The rest of the story unweaves the fantasy tale of how the 2,000 year old Ayesha, She-who-is-to-be-obeyed, became connected to Leo's family. Ayesha is a little out of date in her preferences, still being an Egyptian-style autocrat with a taste for the macabre. I wouldn't have gone out with her on a second date myself, no matter how beautiful she was. The Gloria Swanson role in Sunset Boulevard is evoked in She.

The story is an interesting one, because it builds around the potential of having a world in which women rule by right. That theme was most appropriate for Queen Victoria's time, and the novel considers the Amahaggers, She, and Queen Victoria as alternative models of female leadership. Because of our current enthusiasm for equal opportunity for the sexes, the book is more contemporary in its social commentary than you might think. I saw a parallel in She's overwhelming impact on men to the tragedies that often befall female movie stars who have similar appeals, such as Marilyn Monroe.

Clearly, the message that emerges is that a balance between women and men is better than either the male or the female dominated society. A good thing to think about after you listen to or read this book is what the benefits of balance are. They extend beyond sexual politics. In what other areas is balance better than dominance by a single perspective or influence?