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Land of Black Gold: Palestine version?

luciebix
Member
#1 · Posted: 22 Mar 2006 10:25
I would like to read a version of Land of Black Gold with the origninal Palestine storyline.

What languages is it available in and where could I get it?

I really need English or Spanish, but I understand that it was never publilshed in that version in English.
SingingGandalf
Member
#2 · Posted: 27 Mar 2006 20:20
English is not yet available, only the french. None of the 1st colour editions have yet been put into english, only french in the facsimile editions. In english, only the 1st 3 stories (excluding Soviets) of the black and white versions has been released.
ClaroQuerido
Member
#3 · Posted: 20 Jan 2007 01:12
If you read Spanish then you can manage Portuguese can't you? The original Palestine/Jews version has been published in Portuguese, but I don't think they do any more. You would have to find an out-of-print version. I read it when I was in Brazil - my grandfather has a copy. In my opinion it is better than the modified version.
sliat_1981
Member
#4 · Posted: 9 Nov 2008 07:48
Its quite interesting. I don't think it's racist. It just shows them from a different view, suggesting that maybe they aren't the heroic freedom fighters American media portrays them as.
Harrock n roll
Moderator
#5 · Posted: 12 Nov 2008 12:58
To get back to the original question of whether there is an English version: unfortunately, I feel that Egmont have missed a chance when they released a set of English language facsimiles recently. Why they didn't include the original Land of Black Gold is a bit of a mystery, since this is one of the most significantly altered books, second only to the original version of The Black Island.

With regard to the Palestine version itself, I must be one of the few people who actually prefers the later edition. It is interesting to read the bits about Palestine and the Irgun, but it doesn't actually serve the story.
The Palestine section comes from the rather complicated history of the book.
There was a half completed version made in 1939, abandoned at the point where Tintin is left in the desert. My feeling is that Hergé was intending to come back to the Palestine conflict and Bab El Ehr and make that part of the story itself.
Perhaps Müller's involvement indicated something to do with Nazi 5th columnists vs. the British interests in Palestine?
Whatever his original intentions, when he resumed the story in 1949 he obviously went in a different direction by introducing Ben Kalish Ezab and Abdullah. That makes the whole Palestine section rather arbitrary. Interesting, but a bit pointless to the story as it ended up.

By the time the book was released in English, the British had long left Palestine, so the translators asked him to redraw some of the book. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this (and it has been suggested many times that the changes were imposed on the artist) I think Hergé was happy to change it because he was able to make the story smoother, more logical within itself.
cigee
Member
#6 · Posted: 13 Nov 2008 01:20
Harrock n roll:
I think Hergé was happy to change it because he was able to make the story smoother, more logical within itself.

Indeed, Hergé says something along those line in Numa Sadoul's book.
Harrock n roll
Moderator
#7 · Posted: 13 Nov 2008 11:20
Thanks for pointing that out cigee. I was basing what I knew about it from interviews with the English translators, but I just found the part you refer to in Numa Sadoul's book. Hergé commented:
"I found the story became much simpler, therefore better."

Hergé was known to work 'off-the-cuff', that's to say he improvised as he went along, as opposed to having everything plotted out. I think this was probably more true during his earlier stories, especially when he was having to deliver a double page each week to Le Petit Vingtième.

So, Land of Black Gold might have gone anywhere really, had he been able to continue the original adventure in 1940. It's interesting to speculate what might have been.
Pharaoh
Member
#8 · Posted: 24 Oct 2011 18:27
I was looking through my huge collection of different editions and and versions of Tintin albums, and it hit me that, to this day, the original, politically-charged version of Land of Black Gold has not been made available in English, despite being changed more significantly than some other books.

For example there is an English facsimile of Tintin in America, even though the changes that were made later were very limited, but not the original Land of Black Gold, where changes are bigger and more inherent.

Also, is there a book version out there in any language of the original B/W Shooting Star, with the bankers?

Cheers
mct16
Member
#9 · Posted: 25 Oct 2011 19:56
Pharaoh:
Also, is there a book version out there in any language of the original B/W Shooting Star, with the bankers?

All book versions of that story feature bankers - the ones plotting the sabotage of the expedition.

I believe that this book was the first to be colourised before publication. The only black-and-white version would be the original newspaper strip which, as far as I know, are not available in book form.

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