Born in Birmingham...
Rohmer claimed to have caught one glimpse of the mysterious Mr King. He was, he said, “a tall, dignified Chinese wearing a fur-collared overcoat, his face the embodiment of Satan”.
The recent Boxer Revolution made the time ideal to unveil the ultimate Chinese villain, Rohmer realised. He told his biographer: “Conditions for launching a Chinese villain on the market were ideal”.
Rohmer set about creating an Oriental super-villain, an agent for secret organisation Si-Fan, which planned to destroy the West through drugs, slavery and highprofile assassinations. accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government – which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence.
“Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr Fu Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.”
The character became an overnight sensation and turned Rohmer from a jobbing writer into one of the world’s best-paid authors.
By 1917, three Fu Manchu books had been written and snapped up, but Rohmer was getting tired of his creation and, just as Arthur Conan Doyle did with Sherlock Holmes, attempted to kill him off.
Later, with the cash running out, Fu Manchu was forced out of retirement in 1931. The Daughter Of Fu Manchu, featuring a now knighted Nayland Smith, proved an instant bestseller, and from 1931 to 1959 he added ten more books to the franchise. The man could certainly belt them out.
But times were changing and the works were slated by the Chinese government and America’s Chinese communities, although critic Jack Adrian pointed out : “Rohmer’s own racism was careless and casual, a mere symptom of his times”.
Rohmer heeded the criticism and changed the direction of his books. Rather than plotting to overthrow the white race, Fu Manchu now battled Communism.
The author needed to be prolific. He enjoyed the high-life and frequent trips to his beloved Monte Carlo ate into the mountains of cash.
He died in White Plains, USA on June 1, 1959, at the age of 76 – and there was a certain irony in the way a man accused of racism slipped this mortal coil.
Sax Rohmer succumbed to Asian flu.
The character turned Rohmer from a jobbing writer into one of the world’s bestpaid authors