Dense and mysterious jungles, deep mines and infinite deserts, stormy oceans, blinding beaches and nocturnal flashes: those who love to travel cannot fail to be passionate about the adventurous novels and short stories of Emilio Salgari, the writer who narrated the magic and beauty of so many exotic places where it had never been. Disappeared on April 25 110 years ago, the Veronese writer never traveled except with his imagination, describing the adventures of popular characters such as Sandokan, a pirate from Malaysia, or the pirates of the Antilles and many other imaginary heroes around the world. . His production, as well as his fervent imagination, is vast: over 200 novels and short stories set around the globe, described quietly sitting at his desk. The author, born in Verona in 1862,he told with meticulous and rich descriptions of places, plants, animals and landscapes, as well as the culture and customs of distant peoples, translating them into unique adventures and explorations: from the tropical forest of Malaysia to the snowy Siberia, from the Rocky Mountains of North America to the sunny pampas of Argentina.
Passionate about boating and geography, at the age of 20 he wrote his first short story "I selvaggi della Papuasia", published in four episodes in the Milanese weekly La Valigia. Two years later came his first success with the novel "The Tiger of Malaysia" and since then his career as a writer has not known an end. Despite his fame, however, his life was marked by constant financial difficulties and nervous breakdowns until his suicide on April 25, 1911, when he took his own life with a razor doing harakiri, just like one of his characters would have done.
Salgari's first hero was Sandokan, the protagonist of 11 books on the Pirates of Malaysia cycle and of the most famous and popular television transposition. Symbol of strength and courage, he is the man who opposes injustice and struggles to make freedom triumph. From his impregnable refuge on the small island of Mompracem, Sandokan fought in the waters of Borneo, which in our imagination is the primeval land of unscrupulous adventurers and men who live in the wild. In reality it is a paradisiacal place in Southeast Asia, a still unspoiled land characterized by dozens and dozens of small islands and the richest biodiversity center on the planet. To describe those distant places in detail, Salgari drew on reading, imagination but above all on his encyclopedic knowledge,cataloging every topic - from botany to fauna and ethnography - in detailed cards to consult. For his first success he flew with his imagination to Borneo, to Mompracem, the fictional name of the island of Malaysia that had really existed after careful reconstruction, but destroyed by a volcanic eruption. Instead, there is the bay of Labuan, where Marianna, Sandokan's beloved wife, was born: it is located 8 kilometers from the coast of Sabah, the state that with Sarawak occupies the Malaysian part of the large island of Borneo. It is popular for its beautiful beaches and famous for the cemetery of Australian and British soldiers who died there fighting the Japanese in World War II. And there is also Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, where Sir James Brooke, Sandokan's archenemy, lived.
There are still few visitors to Borneo, attracted by the pristine sea and deserted beaches or by the exotic landscape where they can relive the exploits of the famous hero. Borneo, the third largest island in the world, is located between Malaysia and Indonesia and is a truly wild land, where the real wealth is nature with its mysterious islands and paradisiacal depths, with 210 species of mammals - 44 they are indigenous - and more than 360, recently discovered, between animals and plants. The most extravagant and original are the proboscis monkeys, the orange and blue snakes, the lungless frogs, the long and narrow insects that measure up to half a meter and the giant rafflesia plants with flowers that weigh up to 10 kilos.
Spectacular is the region to the north-east of the country, Sabah, which offers a fascinating interior and a varied and beautiful coast, such as Sipadan Island, surrounded by transparent, emerald-colored water and with the most spectacular seabed in the world.
Remaining in Asia, Salgari told of Siberia with the mines of Algasithal, an imaginary place, and Lake Baikal, and of the splendor of an ancient Chinese court. In Africa, precisely in Sudan, the writer set a love story during the Mahdist war between Sudanese troops and the Anglo-Egyptian army in a crescendo of adventures between Bedouins and escapes along the Nile.
The Caribbean Sea, the island of Tortuga and Venezuela are some of the places where he set the successful adventure novel "The Black Corsair", the first of a series of five novels gathered under the title of the Corsairs of the Antilles. Also in this case the descriptions are absolutely precise and rich in details, especially in the story of flora and fauna.
Salgari also set some stories in Europe: in Scotland among the coal mines and in Sardinia, on the island of San Pietro. The first chapters of the stories "The panthers of Algiers" and "The tuna fishing" are set on the islands of Sant'Antioco and San Pietro, even if Salgari moves the tradition of the tuna traps of southern Sardinia 200 kilometers further north, in the bay. of Alghero.
With his unfailing and fervid imagination he also told of the whale hunters in the North Pole, the slave traders in the Sahara, the deserts in Australia, the condor hunts in Chile, the pearl fishermen in the Antilles, the treasure hunters in Paraguay and the tragedy. of the cutter Eagle en route to Barbados. It took us from the warm Caribbean sea to the mountain peaks of the world, from the Rif of Morocco to the Urals, from Tibet to the volcanoes of Eastern Europe. (HANDLE).