Looking for a good Esperanto read this summer? The next item on my list is the 1930s fantasy adventure, “Mr. Tot acxetas mil okulojn,” by Jean Forge. I have not yet had the chance to order it, but from what I hear, it’s supposed to be quite good. William Auld, poet extraordinaire, placed it on his “Basic Esperanto Reading List,” as one of the key reads for any interested Esperantists. I have also heard that it became a feature film in Germany, under the title “The Thousand Eyes of Doctor Mabuse.”
If you would like to procure a copy, you can find a relatively inexpensive one here. If you read it, let me know what you think!
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I read “Mr. Tot” several years ago. I enjoyed it (more than “Abismoj” and less than “Saltego Trans Jarmilo” by the same author).
I also stocked up on my summer Esperanto reading today — mostly short story collections, including “La Sekreta Miraklo,” a collection of Jorge Luis Borges stories translated by several eminent Esperanto speakers.
It’s been a long time since I read any Fethke (Jean Forge is a pseudonym of Jan Fethke); the last was Abismoj, which is in the Seattle Public Library’s Esperanto collection. If I ever read Mr. Tot it was probably in the 1970s. So looking on Google to see if I could find a used copy at a “nemovada” seller, I stumbled across this new (2008) book from Mondial: http://bit.ly/sutton-lit-encyc – not cheap (over $40) but something your readers ought to know about, and if they’re into literature, ought to read, especially the ones who haven’t learned enough Esperanto yet to delve into less secondary resources.
Haruo
The famous German film director Fritz Lang (1890-1976) made three films about Dr. Mabuse: “Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler” in 1922 (a silent film, of course), “Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse” in 1933 (an early sound film), and finally his very last film: “Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse” from 1960. The third one was based on Jean Forge’s Esperanto book “Mr Tot aĉetas mil okulojn”, but the most famous one was the second; it was strongly Anti-Nazi, and making such a film in Germany in 1933 was quite risky.
Jean Forge’s real name, by the way, was Jan Fethke; he wasn’t French at all, but Polish. To add to the confusion, he was born and died in Germany (but his birth place became Polish after World War II); he lived 1903-1980.