Book Review: The Riddle of the Sands

I’ve just read The Riddle of the Sands. It’s a book written by Robert Erskine Childers, an Englishman and Irish nationalist. It was his only novel and was published in 1903. This book is recognized as one of the first great spy stories.

For me, that is what we have to keep in mind while we’re reading this book. We can’t analyze it under our 2010 vision, since the world, the literature, and the technology are completely different from that time.

Although the story seems simplified and impossible to be believed nowadays, if we think this is a story that took place in the beginning of the last century, it can modify our judgment.

Two common men, but determined as well. One of them, a very good sailor; the other, a fashionable young man. Two friends that had joined each other to a little sail. In the beginning, two different goals. Nevertheless, as the days went by, they agreed they had to solve the riddle of the sands. And, unless they were killed, they were going to investigate it…

They were not spies, and they didn’t have guns, only a strong desire to figure out what was going on in the North Sea. If you want to know more about this story, I suggest you read it!
Ivete