A passenger ship, caring on board thirty admired tourists, eager to acquaint with great monuments of Ancient Egypt, makes its way along Nile. Several-day journey brings them to the land of sphinxes and pyramids, where dangers that pose hazard to their life are awaiting for them.
This novel is somehow got lost among other works of Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes. Considered to be a prophetic work of the 19th century, it foretold some of the problems of nowadays – terrorism and the notion of the “hot spots of the planet”. The characters are expressly common people: a brave colonel, a light-headed Frenchman, young ingenuous woman and her pious aunt, who try to hold out till the arrival of the Egyptian forces. Doyle describes how these different people behave in extreme conditions, what they choose: to accept Islam or die, or find the third way. “A Desert Drama: Being the Tragedy of the Korosko” is a perfect chance to meet “another” Conan Doyle, not the innovator in the field of crime fiction, but the author of social story, still very vital.