13 h 37 minAudiobook17 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What draws a cautious hunter toward a hidden queen whose power seems to have no limit?
In H. Rider Haggard’s She and Allan, Allan Quatermain hears of a queen in Africa’s interior. An experienced hunter and trader, he knows the risks of the road. Yet curiosity pulls him toward a journey he would rather avoid, and toward Ayesha, the ancient ruler called She-who-must-be-obeyed.
Allan faces danger with companions whose courage and cunning matter: the proud Zulu warrior Umslopogaas and the talkative Hans, intent on staying alive. Beyond the road waits Ayesha, commanding a hidden people through awe and fear. Allan’s practical doubts and dry humor give this strange world a steady, human point of view.
What you’ll discover
- A wary guide Follow Allan’s plainspoken account, where hard experience meets a curiosity he cannot easily put aside.
- A queen beyond measure Encounter Ayesha, whose beauty, long life, and fearful will place power at the heart of mystery.
- Companions under pressure Meet Umslopogaas and Hans, bringing bravery, pride, cunning, and the urgent wish to survive.
- Warnings along the road Discover Zikali, the old Zulu seer whose words carry the weight of warning and fate.
- Adventure with uneasy questions Explore belief, empire, and the cost of endless power through a cautious storyteller’s eyes.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy lost cities, fierce battles and a veiled queen who speaks in riddles, and who like an old hunter telling his own tale with a dry wit and a stubborn streak of doubt.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A hunter seeks the dead and takes a charm
- Flood and snake push him toward Umslopogaas
- A chief with a plot and a betraying wife
- A lion, a king's search and the north road
- A sad young woman on a lonely farm
- Raiders from the north and an oath of vengeance
- A trail through reeds, stone and swamp
- An ambush at dawn and a mountain wall
- The veiled queen and the tale she tells
- Doubt, mockery and the shape of the telling
Who’s who
- Allan QuatermainAn old hunter and trader, sensible and doubtful, who tells the tale and goes north to learn whether the loved dead live on.
- UmslopogaasA Zulu chief of the People of the Axe, fierce and proud, who carries the ancient axe Inkosikaas and seeks glory and his lost wife.
- HansAllan's Hottentot servant, a drunkard, a superb tracker and a great talker, who trusts the Great Medicine absolutely.
- ZikaliThe dwarf wizard called Opener-of-Roads, who sends Allan north with a carved charm and wants an answer to his own scheme.
- AyeshaThe veiled queen of Kôr, called She-who-commands, beautiful and mocking, who claims great age and needs an army against her enemy.
- Captain RobertsonA Scottish sea captain turned trader, ruined by drink and grief, who swears to stay sober until his daughter is rescued.
- Inez RobertsonThe captain's sad-eyed, devout daughter, who stays at a lonely farm out of duty and is carried off by raiders.
- BillaliThe courteous white-bearded servant of Ayesha, who rescues the party and guides them into Kôr.
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 13 h 37 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 17 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Lei e Allan
by H. Rider Haggard · 1921
A hunter and a Zulu axeman cross a deadly swamp to find a veiled queen in the ruins of Kôr.
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In short
She and Allan is an adventure novel by H. Rider Haggard, who died in 1925.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A hunter seeks the dead and takes a charm
The book opens with a note written by Allan Quatermain in his old age in Yorkshire. He says he set down this story long ago for his own comfort and meant never to publish it, since he had promised to keep silent about the woman at its heart. Then his friend Captain Good lent him a novel called She, and Allan read it straight through the night. He found the same Ayesha in its pages, and he decided only that his own account might one day be allowed to appear.
The story proper begins with Allan's grief. He is a plain, practical man, yet he has lost people he loved, and for years he has wondered whether the dead live on anywhere. He pays a spiritualist in Durban a guinea and gets nothing. A clergyman tells him to be content with the Bible. Mystical books and a dose of Swedenborg leave him no wiser, so he gives up.
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What is She and Allan about?
It is an adventure novel in which the hunter Allan Quatermain, helped by a Zulu chief and a Hottentot servant, crosses Africa to find a mysterious white queen. On the way a kidnapped girl pulls him deep into the unknown.
Who is Ayesha in She and Allan?
Ayesha is the veiled ruler of Kôr, called She-who-commands. She claims to have lived for two thousand years, tells Allan changing stories about herself and demands his help against an enemy chief.
What is the Great Medicine in the book?
It is a small ivory carving of the wizard Zikali, hung on a cord of elephant hair. Allan wears it as a token. Many people fear or honor it, and it keeps opening doors and stopping fights.
The author
H. Rider Haggard
1856–1925 · English adventure novelist
Henry Rider Haggard (1856–1925) was an English novelist. He was born in Norfolk, lived in southern Africa from 1875 to 1881, and later settled in Norfolk. He wrote King Solomon’s Mines (1885), She (1887), and Beatrice (1890). He also wrote about agriculture and rural life. He died in London.
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