A 19th century fictional Malaysian prince turned pirate who made an Indian actor a household name in Italy is the star of the stall put up by the consulate general of Italy at the Book Fair.
A tribute is being paid to Emilio Salgari, considered the father of Italian adventure fiction, through a display of the covers of his swashbuckling action adventures set in exotic locales in the Indo-Malayan region. He had written more than 80 novels and 135 short stories between 1883 and 1911.
“In the last couple of years at the Book Fair, we had celebrated Tagore and other serious Indo-Italian connections. This time we thought of planning our stall on popular fiction and chose to focus on Salgari. His work has an Indian connection through the actor Kabir Bedi, who played Salgari’s hero Sandokan with great success in a TV mini-series in 1976. Everyone in Italy remembers Kabir Bedi as Sandokan,” said acting consul general Maria-Claudia Marini.
A young visitor looks at a Sandokan book cover Sudeshna Banerjee
The consulate general of Italy got in touch with the Museo della Scuola e del Libro per l’Infanzia (Museum of School and Children’s Books) in Turin. “They sent us copies of first edition covers of 12 Salgari adventures which we have put up here,” she said.
Just as Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay had never been to Africa when he wrote his evergreen jungle adventure Chander Pahar, Salgari too had never set foot in India. He had gained his insights from travel magazines, newspaper articles and foreign literature. Six of Salgari’s 11 Sandokan stories are set in India, in the Assam region, with Calcutta and Delhi being specifically named. There is another link closer home on the list of protagonists in the form of Tremal Naik, a Bengali snake charmer, who is a lieutenant to a Portuguese adventurer, a major figure in the last three volumes of the series.
The cover of an album on display in which children in Italy would stick pictures of Sandokan, much like they did of football stars Sudeshna Banerjee
The beautifully illustrated covers feature turbaned and bearded protagonists, sometimes wielding naked swords, and often a tiger. The stories have colourful titles like The Mysteries of the Black Jungle, Yanez’s Revenge, The Captain of the Djumna and The Two Tigers.
Marini points to a poster of the TV series, based on the swashbuckling character, where Kabir Bedi is eminently recognisable from his illustration. “We tried to get in touch with him for a message but did not succeed,” she said.