Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (1913) introduced one of early twentieth-century fiction’s most enduring — and most problematic — villains. Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie race across Edwardian London to thwart a criminal mastermind whose schemes threaten the British Empire. The novel is a product of its era: its “Yellow Peril” anxieties reflect the racial prejudices of Edwardian Britain and should be read as historical document.
As an artifact of imperial-age thriller writing, the book had enormous influence on the adventure genre and on popular culture’s conception of the supervillain. Download the free EPUB to engage with a text that shaped — and reflected — a century of genre fiction.