The Whispering Mummy and Others

The work of British writer Sax Rohmer (pseudonym of Arthur Sarsfield Ward, 1883-1959) was once immensely popular, but most of it has lapsed into oblivion-except his corpus of weird fiction. This volume features the best of his tales of horror and strangeness, culled from his numerous story collections from the 1910s and 1920s. The mystery of Egypt dominated Rohmer's imagination, and the volume Tales of Secret Egypt (1918) contains some of his best weird work, such as "The Whispering Mummy," "The Death-Ring of Sneferu," and "Lord of the Jackals," which may or may not involve the supernatural. "Tchériapin," Rohmer's finest weird tale, is authentically supernatural and even features a science-fictional undercurrent in its suggestion that a chemical formula can render any organic substance hard as diamonds. "The Curse of a Thousand Kisses" fuses horror and poignancy in its suggestion that a hideous old woman is the centuries-old Scheherazade, the victim of a curse. Sax Rohmer can take his place with H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and other writers who, while chiefly focusing on tales of adventure, was frequently inclined to incorporate terror and weirdness into his exciting narratives. His stories are as readable today as when they were first written.