John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps and Prester John

John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps and Prester John

The Thirty-Nine Steps was published in 1915, and is the first novel in the Richard Hannay series--and I would say is even a bit more exciting of an adventure than Greenmantle. Our hero is on the lam from both the police and international intriguers, using his wits to escape from the villains, and eventually, setting everything right. I can see why it was made into one of Hitchcock's early films--as well as several other adaptations. I can't remember the Hitchcock version terribly clearly, but my impression is that it didn't follow the novel that closely--because the novel is exciting and spell-binding in a way that the movie really wasn't.

Before The Thirty-Nine Steps, however, Buchan wrote Prester John, published in 1910. While there are some rather un-PC things said in The Thirty-Nine Steps about Jews, it is pretty clear that this is one character's opinion, and one that was pretty typical in that period. There's nothing to lead you to believe that Buchan felt that way. Prester John is another matter.

It is set in South Africa, and there are parts of it that definitely reflect a white man's burden view of Africa. While Buchan makes it clear that there are injustices that have been done to the Africans by the whites, there is still a pronounced Colonial view of them as children--with the implication that this is not a cultural problem, but something racial. And yet, Buchan does for the Africans what he does for the Germans and Muslims in Greenmantle: he recognizes that they are human beings, and that there is a range of character in all races. The enemy leader in Prester John is a great danger to white South Africa--but his aspirations are, in their own way, noble.

Nonetheless, if you read Prester John as a period piece, it tells you quite a bit about the views of race that were common in that time--and it is nonetheless a rousing adventure story, rather along the line of the 1930s serials that the Indiana Jones movies so lovingly re-created. And unlike The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle, which are carefully and thoroughly realistic, Prester John at times crosses the line into not quite believable--but still loads of fun to read! You may find yourself struggling in places with his use of Afrikaans, but I was able to figure out many of the words from context or by looking for German cognates.

I can't tell if Buchan built this story around a somewhat real historical incident or not. He refers to it repeatedly as the "Kaffir Revolt" but there's plenty of such named events in South African history. The 1873 one mentioned in this December 31, 1873 New York Times article is too early, so perhaps he is referring to the 1894 "Kaffir Revolt" that I found referenced in the August 15, 1894 West Australian, p 5. (While the word "Kaffir" to refer to black South Africans was originally not offensive, and continued to be widely used into the 20th century, I'm told by a white South African friend that the term is now equivalent to "nigger.")

By the way, because these novels are now out of copyright, many are available for free from books.google.com. Here's Prester John. And The Thirty-Nine Steps. And here are all three novels in the Hannay series in one volume: The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, and Mr. Standfast (which I have not yet read).