Other editions of book Black Heart and White Heart: By Henry Rider Haggard - Illustrated

If you're hankering for a classic H. Rider Haggard action-adventure tale, dive into Black Heart and White Heart. Set amidst the Zulu nation, this gripping account of a blood feud among the ranks of the tribe unspools at a breakneck pace. With all of the elements that made Haggard one of the most popular writers of his time, this classic adventure novel is sure to satisfy.

If you're hankering for a classic H. Rider Haggard action-adventure tale, dive into Black Heart and White Heart. Set amidst the Zulu nation, this gripping account of a blood feud among the ranks of the tribe unspools at a breakneck pace. With all of the elements that made Haggard one of the most popular writers of his time, this classic adventure novel is sure to satisfy.

Sir Henry Rider Haggard KBE (1856-1925) was a Victorian writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations. After failing his army entrance exam he was sent to a private 'crammer' in London to prepare for the entrance exam for the British Foreign Office, for which he never sat. Haggard's father sent him to Africa in an unpaid position as assistant to the secretary to Lieutenant-Governor of Natal Sir Henry Bulwer. Heavily influenced by the larger-than-life adventurers he met in Colonial Africa, the great mineral wealth discovered in Africa, and the ruins of ancient lost civilizations in Africa such as Great Zimbabwe, Haggard created his Allan Quatermain adventures. Haggard also wrote about agricultural and social issues reform, in part inspired by his experiences in Africa, but also based on what he saw in Europe. Haggard is most famous as the author of the best-selling novel King Solomon's Mines (1885). Amongst his other works are She (1887), Allan Quatermain (1888), Eric Brighteyes (1891) and Ayesha (1895).

"Has the age of miracle quite gone by?" asks H. Rider Haggard concerning this story. "Hardly," most readers would be inclined to answer, if the question were put to them while their brains were alive with the witcheries and the wonders which are Haggard's " stock-in trade." The marvels he recounts lose nothing in effect because they deal with the immediate and the remote past of the country in which Briton and Boer have just fought the fight for supremacy and empire. And by an odd coincidence, a book which opens with a description of an encounter between an Englishman and a Boer at Utrecht appeared on the very day on which Utrecht was occupied by British forces.Haggard takes us to Zululand just before the outbreak of the war which crushed the power of Cetewayo, to ancient Zimbabwe, just before the period at which the Phoenicians may be supposed to have succumbed to the attacks of the native barbarians, and to a part of Central Africa occupied by the Children of Fire, whose country had been penetrated, and whose horrible customs had been observed by none but a solitary missionary.The novelist rings the changes on scenes and ideas which he has made familiar; here are the wizardry, the superstitions, the horrors, the deeds of devotion, of treachery, of love and of triumph, the superlative heroism, spiritual and material, which characterize all his work. Imagination runs riot, making unrealities live, and the fascination of "King Solomon's Mines" and " She" is over all.