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/lit/ - Literature

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21623527 No.21623527 [Reply] [Original]

What are some fun adventure stories set in the empires of the late colonial era? Roughly from about the time the Gatling gun was invented (so 1861) to the outbreak of WW2.

>> No.21623556
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21623556

>>21623527

>> No.21623637

>>21623527

— The Four Feathers (A. E. W. Mason)
Guy leaves the army just as war breaks out and everyone calls him a coward so he decides to show them. Not bad but I found his fiancée a bit annoying.

— Kim (Rudyard Kipling)
Young not-actually-Indian-but-everyone-thinks-he-is boy gets mixed up in spying etc in India.

— The Far Pavilions (M. M. Kaye)
Same sort of setting as Kim. It's written by a woman, so it's a lot more interested in Forbidden Love than Ruthlessly Subjugating The Lesser Races, but it's still not bad.

>> No.21623642

>>21623527
The Sharpe series. Starts with Sharpe's Tiger

>> No.21623646
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21623646

uploading picrel to libgen in a couple minutes. fiction based on the author's trip to japan and china and his experience of the different political movements going on in an asia that knew it was under western spheres of influence and trying to catch up.

>> No.21623782

>>21623527
Flashman is a few decades earlier, but very fun.

>> No.21623799

>>21623646
thanks anon, sounds cool.
>>21623527
The flashman papers are also great, but only about a third of the books take place within your requested timeframe. Still worth checking out

>> No.21623802
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21623802

>> No.21624616
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21624616

You can't beat the works of Sir R.F. Burton if you want to truly understand Africa...

>> No.21624857
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21624857

I've been looking for Bong'Kwe by Wynant D Hubbard, an interesting guy writing mostly in the 30s and 40s. I read it as a kid. Has anyone here read it?

>> No.21625197
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>> No.21625428

>>21623527
Recollections of a rogue for mexi american war comfy

>> No.21626073

Not exactly in an empire but B. Traven’s novels set in Mexico are full of two fisted working class adventure. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is his best known.

>> No.21626777

>>21623799
forgot to upload it earlier, here you go
https://library.bz/fiction/uploads/1ED8E88FF24C5977726D2915937804A6

>> No.21627875

>>21623527
In Desert and Wilderness (1911) by Henryk Sienkiewicz

> The story takes place in the late 19th century Egypt, during the Mahdist War. A 14-year-old Polish boy, Stanisław (Staś) Tarkowski, and 8-year-old English girl, Nel Rawlison, live with their fathers and grow up in the ton of Port Said. Their fathers are engineers who supervise the maintenance of the Suez Canal. One day, the Mahdist War begins in Sudan, led by a Muslim preacher, the Mahdi. Staś and Nel are captured as hostages by a group of Arabs who hope that they can exchange the children for Fatima, Mahdi's distant relative, who had been arrested by the British at the beginning of the novel.

>> No.21627922

>>21626073
Seconding this. The Bridge in the Jungle is also kino.

>> No.21628742

>>21627875
On the Madhist war, Churchill's account (The River War) is not bad, and well-written, though a bit dry and military.