English · Intermediate
Read King Solomon's Mines in Englishwith every sentence explained
H. Rider Haggard · 1885
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard was first published in 1885. In Passage you read the full text in the original English, marked intermediate and filed under historical fiction and thriller and suspense. It runs to about 80,500 words.
A map drawn in blood. A desert no one has crossed. A legendary treasure waiting at the end.
Allan Quatermain is a tough, honest elephant hunter who has spent his life in southern Africa. When the English aristocrat Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good ask for his help, he cannot say no: Sir Henry's brother vanished while searching for the lost mines of King Solomon, said to be full of diamonds.
Their only guide is an ancient map, scrawled three hundred years ago by a dying Portuguese explorer. With a proud and mysterious servant called Umbopa, the three men set off across a burning desert towards a range of snow-capped mountains, and a hidden kingdom beyond them.
Published in 1885, King Solomon's Mines was a sensation and created the "lost world" adventure, inspiring everything from Tarzan to Indiana Jones.
- Author
- H. Rider Haggard
- First published
- 1885
- Language
- English
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Thriller and Suspense
- Length
- About 80,500 words
How it opens
It is a curious thing that at my age—fifty-five last birthday—I should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history. I wonder what sort of a history it will be when I have finished it, if ever I come to the end of the trip! I have done a good many things in my life, which seems a long one to me, owing to my having begun work so young, perhaps. At an age when other boys are at school I was earning my living as a trader in the old Colony. I have been trading, hunting, fighting, or mining ever since.
Reading King Solomon's Mines in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in English. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday English feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
