Who created the most famous southeast Asian hero during the heyday of imperialism and colonialism? Who inaugurated with the mysteries of the black jungle over a century long link uniting the Italian imaginary to the Indian one? Who envisioned the most celebrated interracial love stories of world literature, those between Sandokan, leader of the tigers of Mompracem, and Marianna, the pearl of Labuan, between Tremal-naik, the Bengali snake catcher, and Ada, the virgin of Kali’s temple at the time of the British Raj? Who defined the Caribbean as a symbolic trope of plunder and rebellion through the melancholic viewpoint of the black corsair and the forsaken love for his enemy’s daughter? Who created Yanez de Gomera, a most famous Portuguese hero, and the imperfect voice of white anti-colonialism?

It was Italy’s great adventure novelist, Emilio Salgari (Verona, 1862 – Turin, 1911). From the Mahdi’s revolt in Sudan to the African slave trade, from the Philippine insurgency to the Mediterranean at war between Turks and Christians, and to ancient Egypt, Salgari’s breath-taking plots, together with his indigenous heroes and heroines in Vietnam, Thailand, Venezuela, arctic Canada, the American far west, the Chinese diaspora, deeply challenge canonical colonialist representations by contemporary Victorian authors like Conrad, Kipling, and Forster.