Publisher's Synopsis
The scenes of this story are laid in Egypt - Abu-Tabah, the inscrutable Egyptian, who appears and disappears so mysteriously, is not so blood-curdling a villain as Fu Manchu, but his exploits possess the same breathless interest that characterized the activities of the yellow doctor. In the latter half of the book, notably in the story, The Valley of the Sorceress, there is an element new in Rohmer's work - that of the supernatural... Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, better known as Sax Rohmer, was a prolific English novelist best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu. He worked as a poet, songwriter and comedy sketch writer for Music hall performers before creating the Sax Rohmer persona and pursuing a career writing weird fiction. His first published work came in 1903, when the short story "The Mysterious Mummy" was sold to Pearson's Weekly. Rohmer's main literary influences seem to have been Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and M. P. Shiel.
