The Mask of Fu-Manchu (33 page)

That was the first story featuring Fu-Manchu, and the first portion of the novel
The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
Novels such as
The Yellow Claw, Tales of Secret Egypt, Dope, The Dream Detective, The Green Eyes of Bast
, and
Tales of Chinatown
made Rohmer one of the most successful novelists of the 1920s and 1930s.

There are fourteen Fu-Manchu novels, and the character has been featured in radio, television, comic strips, and comic books. He first appeared in film in 1923, and has been portrayed by such actors as Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, John Carradine, Peter Sellers, and Nicolas Cage.

Rohmer died in 1959, a victim of an outbreak of the type A influenza known as the Asian flu.

BY LESLIE S. KLINGER

T
he “yellow peril”—that stereotypical threat of Asian conquest— seized the public imagination in the late nineteenth century, in political diatribes and in fiction. While several authors exploited this fear, the work of Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, better known as Sax Rohmer, stood out.

Dr. Fu-Manchu was born in Rohmer’s short story “The Zayat Kiss,” which first appeared in a British magazine in 1912. Nine more stories quickly appeared and, in 1913, the tales were collected as
The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
in America). The Doctor appeared in two more series before the end of the Great War, collected as
The Devil Doctor (The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu)
and
The Si-Fan Mysteries (The Hand of Fu-Manchu).

After a fourteen-year absence, the Doctor reappeared in 1931, in
The Daughter of Fu-Manchu.
There were nine more novels, continuing until Rohmer’s death in 1959, when
Emperor Fu-Manchu
was published. Four stories, which had previously appeared only in magazines, were published in 1973 as
The Wrath of Fu-Manchu.

The Fu-Manchu stories also have been the basis of numerous motion pictures, most famously the 1932 MGM film
The Mask of Fu Manchu
, featuring Boris Karloff as the Doctor.

In the early stories, Fu-Manchu and his cohorts are the “yellow menace,” whose aim is to establish domination of the Asian races. In the 1930s Fu-Manchu foments political dissension among the working classes. By the 1940s, as the wars in Europe and Asia threaten terrible destruction, Fu-Manchu works to depose other world leaders and defeat the Communists in Russia and China.

Rohmer undoubtedly read the works of Conan Doyle, and there is a strong resemblance between Nayland Smith and Holmes. There are also marked parallels between the four doctors, Petrie and Watson as the narrator-comrades, and Dr. Fu-Manchu and Professor Moriarty as the arch-villains.

The emphasis is on fast-paced action set in exotic locations, evocatively described in luxuriant detail, with countless thrills occurring to the unrelenting ticking of a tightly-wound clock. Strong romantic elements and sensually described, sexually attractive women appear throughout the tales, but ultimately it is the
fantastic
nature of the adventures that appeal.

This is the continuing appeal of Dr. Fu-Manchu, for despite his occasional tactic of alliance with the West, he unrelentingly pursued his own agenda of world domination. In the long run, Rohmer’s depiction of Fu-Manchu rose above the fears and prejudices that may have created him to become a picture of a timeless and implacable creature of menace.

A complete version of this essay can be found in
The Mystery of Fu-Manchu
, also available from Titan Books.