King Solomon’s Mines

by H. Rider Haggard Book 1 in the Allan Quatermain series.

First published 1885

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Allan Quatermain agrees to guide Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good into the southern African interior in search of Curtis’s missing brother. Their route crosses desert and mountain before reaching the isolated kingdom of Kukuanaland, where a disputed succession and the promise of Solomon’s legendary diamond mines turn an expedition into a struggle for survival.

Haggard combines frontier travel, lost-world invention and imperial adventure in the novel that established Quatermain. The book reflects late Victorian assumptions about Africa while also giving the expedition’s African companion Umbopa political purpose and agency as he challenges the usurper Twala.