Financial disaster sends Tarzan back to Opar in search of treasure, where the priestess La and rival Oparians again place him in danger. An earthquake leaves him with memory loss while Jane becomes entangled with the disgraced Belgian officer Albert Werper and a band involved in ivory and slave trading.
Belgian officers, ivory trading and expeditionary travel place the adventure in the final phase of European colonial expansion in Africa. Opar remains one of Burroughs's great lost-world inventions, while the surrounding world of money, trade and imperial mobility gives Tarzan's treasure hunt a distinctly early-twentieth-century setting.
Tarzan’s amnesia temporarily removes the habits and relationships that normally define him, allowing other characters to interpret his behaviour without the knowledge readers possess. At the same time, Opar’s treasure attracts competing claims that expose the violence beneath supposedly civilised financial interests. The novel combines memory loss with a struggle over wealth to question how identity is maintained when both history and property become uncertain.
Louis L’Amour
97 books
Christopher Nicole
49 books
Colin Falconer
22 books