The Adventures of Tintin. Red Sea Sharks

There is a coup in Hemed. Tintin and Captain Haddock fly there to help the legitimate ruler, Emir Ben Kalish-Ezab, regain power. However, their arrival is already known: at Wad ed-Dahr airport, our heroes are put on a plane and sent back. Shortly after takeoff, the engine catches fire, but the pilot still manages to land on the shores of the Red Sea. To top it all off, an explosion occurs in the plane abandoned by passengers! Realizing that all this is not without reason, Tintin suggests secretly returning to Wad ed-Dahr, and in the morning the friends are already knocking on the door of Senor Oliveira da Figueira's shop, who tells them where to find the Emir. The heroes make their way into the mountains, meet Ben Kalish-Ezab and learn from him shocking facts about those behind the rebels. Tintin intends to thwart their criminal plans...

The magazine version of the 19th album of The Adventures of Tintin began on 31 October 1956 and finished on 1 January 1958; the album edition was published the same year. This volume concludes the “marine” theme of the series, which began with “The Crab with the Golden Claws” and continued first with “The Mysterious Star” and a little later with the pirate duology (“The Secret of the Unicorn” and “The Treasure of Red Rakkam”). Moreover, in the subsequent stories we will not see Tintin and his comrades on board ocean-going vessels; the only watercraft that they will still have to test for durability in the five final volumes is an inflatable boat in “Flight 714 to Sydney”. An interesting detail: “Red Sea Sharks” set a record for the series in the number of characters already familiar to readers from previous albums. In addition to the permanent members of Tintin's "close family" (Captain Haddock, Professor Tournesol, Dupont and Dupond, Nestor), on the pages of the album we meet General Alcazar (his eternal rival Tapioca is only mentioned, his image is not in the book), the former chief of police of the International Settlement in Shanghai Dawson, Abdullah and his father Emir Ben Kalish Ezab, Sheikh Bab El-Era (though we only see him in a photograph in the newspaper), the Portuguese merchant Oliveira da Figueira, the odious Doctor Müller (here he hides under the name of Mühl-Pasha), the infernal gangster-billionaire Rastapopoulos, the singer Bianca Castafiore, the first mate Allan Thompson and the unbearable joker Seraphin Lampion. On the contrary, only one of the new characters will appear in the series again: Estonian pilot Petr Tamm (we will see him in the already mentioned “Flight 714 to Sydney”).

Recommended reader age: 7+

Author: Hergé
Artist: Herge
Translation: Mikhail Khachaturov
Number of pages: 64
Publisher: Melik-Pashayev
Cover type: Hardcover
Dimensions: 290 × 217 × 10 mm
ISBN: 978-5-00041-603-7
Series: The Adventures of Tintin