The First World War reaches Tarzan’s African estate when German troops attack and Tarzan believes Jane has been killed. Driven by revenge, he wages his own campaign against German forces, works alongside Allied troops and later crosses dangerous country toward the isolated valley of Xuja.
The opening chapters are rooted in the East African theatre of the First World War, where colonial frontiers become battlefields and German and Allied forces move through the region. Burroughs gradually shifts from wartime pursuit into lost-world adventure, but Tarzan's rage and the direction of his journey are driven by the violence of the 1914–1918 conflict.
The wartime setting gives Tarzan’s revenge a political enemy as well as a personal one. His belief that Jane has been murdered turns the European conflict into an individual campaign, while later encounters complicate the certainty on which that vengeance began. The novel reflects First World War propaganda attitudes toward Germany, making its historical prejudices part of the context in which the adventure was written.
Louis L’Amour
97 books
Christopher Nicole
49 books
Colin Falconer
22 books