''The Ivory Child'' is a novel by H. Rider Haggard featuring

Allan Quatermain Allan Quatermain is the protagonist of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel ''King Solomon's Mines'', its one sequel ''Allan Quatermain'' (1887), twelve prequel novels and four prequel short stories, totalling eighteen works. An English professional ...

Plot

While Quatermain visits Lord Randall, two foreigners come asking for Macumazana—that is, asking for Allan Quatermain by the name he used among the Africans. The two visitors are Harut and Marut, priests and doctors of the White Kendah People and they have come to ask Allan Quatermain for his help. The White Kendah people are at war with the Black Kendah people who have an evil spirit for a god. And that spirit of the god resides in the largest elephant they have ever seen, an elephant that no man can kill—save Allan Quatermain. And now our intrepid hero must return to Africa and destroy this evil spirit before it kills every one of the White Kendah People.

Themes

The novel is the first in which Haggard deals with the theme of a person who loses his memory after a shocking event and then recovers it after a similar event.

Reception

E. F. Bleiler Everett Franklin Bleiler (April 30, 1920 – June 13, 2010) was an American editor, bibliographer, and scholar of science fiction, detective fiction, and fantasy literature. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he co-edited the first "year's best" s ...

stated that although ''The Ivory Child'' had a similar plot to other Haggard novels, "the incidents are well-handled and the power of Fate is well indicated."

References

External links

* * Novels by H. Rider Haggard 1916 British novels 1916 fantasy novels Fiction set in 1874 {{1910s-fantasy-novel-stub