Resumen
Resumen de She
Para quién es
Readers who love lost worlds, daring expeditions and larger-than-life heroines, and who enjoy a narrator with a dry sense of humour. It suits anyone drawn to ancient mysteries, secret cities and questions about love, beauty and mortality.
De qué trata este libro
She is an adventure novel by H. Rider Haggard, first printed in the 1880s. It is told by Ludwig Horace Holly, a Cambridge scholar, who sets down what he and his ward saw in the heart of Africa. Haggard drew on his own years in southern Africa to give the tale its lions, swamps and burning heat. It gives you a lost city, a deadly queen and a question about whether anyone should seek to live forever.
The book begins in a college room at midnight. A dying friend leaves Holly an iron chest and a five-year-old boy named Leo. Twenty years later the chest is opened, and inside lies a broken clay pot covered in writing. It tells of an Egyptian princess, her murdered husband and a white queen who cannot grow old. Holly thinks it is nonsense. Leo does not, and the two men, with their loyal servant Job, set sail for the African coast to find out.
What follows is a voyage through storm, marsh and cannibal country, toward a ruined city carved into a mountain. You will meet a ruler whom her people call She-who-must-be-obeyed, and you will watch a sensible man lose his footing in her presence. Let us begin with the strange visit that sets everything moving.
En este resumen
- 1A Dying Friend Leaves a Strange TrustFree
- 2The Broken Pot Tells a Dangerous Tale
- 3Storm, Swamp and the Stone Head
- 4The Amahagger and the Woman Who Kisses
- 5A Feast with a Hot Pot
- 6Fever, Marsh and the Road to Kôr
- 7The Veiled Queen Speaks
- 8A Soul in Hell and a Day of Judgment
- 9What the Story Is Really About
Idea clave 1 de 9
A Dying Friend Leaves a Strange Trust
The story opens in Cambridge, where the young scholar Ludwig Horace Holly is working late over his mathematics. He is short, immensely strong and, by his own account, so ugly that he has learned to live without company. Near midnight his only friend, a man named Vincey, staggers in carrying a heavy iron box. Vincey is coughing blood and says he will not live to see morning.
Vincey asks Holly to raise his five-year-old son Leo until the boy is twenty-five. The child is not to go to school, and he must learn Greek, advanced mathematics and Arabic. On his twenty-fifth birthday, Holly is to open the box with three keys and let Leo decide whether to take up a quest. Vincey offers half his income as payment and makes Holly swear a solemn oath. He adds that he will haunt his friend if the trust is broken.
Vincey also tells a tale about his family. He claims that his ancestors go back more than two thousand years to a Greek priest of Isis named Kallikrates. This priest broke his vows, fled Egypt with a royal princess and was killed in Africa by a beautiful white queen. Holly decides his friend must be drunk or mad. He locks the keys away, hides the chest and goes to bed, and in the morning the college servant finds Vincey dead.
A lawyer's letter and a copy of the will confirm every detail. Holly accepts the guardianship, moves into lodgings near the college gates and hires a round-faced young man named Job as the boy's attendant. Leo arrives, a golden-haired child, studies the two men and announces that Holly is ugly but good. From that moment the pair are devoted to each other, and the undergraduates nickname them Beauty and the Beast.
The years pass in lessons, hunting trips and long walks. Leo grows into a tall, quick-witted young man, and nearly every woman who meets him falls in love with him. On the eve of his twenty-fifth birthday, he and Holly fetch the chest from the bank, where it has gathered cobwebs for two decades. Neither of them sleeps that night, and the next morning the keys are laid on the table.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Questions about She
What is the book She by H. Rider Haggard about?
It follows Holly and his adopted son Leo as they trace an ancient family legend to a hidden African city. There they meet Ayesha, a queen said to have lived for two thousand years, and face the dangers of her kingdom.
Who is She-who-must-be-obeyed?
She is the title the Amahagger give their ruler, whose own name is Ayesha. She is a veiled queen of dazzling beauty who rules a kingdom of caves and tombs, and who claims to have found a way to hold off death.
What does the potsherd of Amenartas mean in the story?
The sherd is a piece of clay jar on which an Egyptian princess wrote a message to her son. It describes her husband's death in Africa, and it passes through the family for centuries, drawing Leo and Holly to the quest.
Is She a true story, and when was it written?
It is a work of fiction, first published in the 1880s. Haggard drew on his years in southern Africa for the settings, but the lost kingdom, the Amahagger and the queen are products of his imagination.
Is She easy to read today?
It is an adventure story told in a lively first-person voice, with shipwreck, lion hunts, chases and eerie scenes in brisk chapters. Holly's dry humour and Job's comic gloom add warmth, so the pages move quickly.