A Desert Drama
by Arthur Conan Doyle
In a book ripped from the headlines. a group of tourists – a recent Smith graduate and her aunt, a Wall Street attorney, a retired British Special Forces colonel, a Frenchman of means – are enjoying a package tour of the Nile when Moslem extremists swoop down, capture them, and threaten to behead any who do not embrace Islam. Published in 1897, originally as
The Tragedy of the Korosko, and recommended tangentially in one of the Michael Dirda collections I’ve been enjoying lately this month. One sometimes wishes the characters had a little more space, and that we had a little more intimacy with them, and that they had a few more ideas and a lot less racism. Still, it’s a rollicking time.
