The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tarzan the invincible
Title: Tarzan the invincible
Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Illustrator: Frank Frazetta
Release date: July 15, 2023 [eBook #71195]
Most recently updated: April 22, 2025
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Ace Books, Inc, 1930
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
TARZAN
THE INVINCIBLE
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
ACE BOOKS, INC.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York 36, N.Y.
This Ace edition follows the text of the first hard-cover
book edition, originally published in 1930.
Cover art and title page illustration by Frank Frazetta.
Printed in U.S.A.
CONTEST OF JUNGLE CUNNING
A small band of white men encamped in the jungle, involved in some kind of expedition—seemingly innocuous, unimportant. But on the success or failure of their plan hung the destiny of Africa.
Only Tarzan could stop the mad machinations of Zveri and his fiercely determined comrades. But Tarzan would have to fight for his own life elsewhere, in the grim ruins of ancient Opar, whose strange priests were as fierce in their vengeance as its beautiful women were fierce in their love.
And Tarzan, lord of the jungle and all its creatures, would have to prove himself indeed invincible against the overwhelming odds of the most dangerous enemy—man.
FOREWORD
Master storyteller that he was, Edgar Rice Burroughs developed a variety of narrative techniques, applying different ones to different series of stories so that each series has a distinct "feel" of its own, not only in setting and characters, but in the very construction of the story and in the writing itself. For his Mars series, for instance, Burroughs began each story with a rather elaborate "frame" in which the story's hero was introduced. The hero then would tell the main story in the first person. The readers became so accustomed to this format that when one magazine published a Burroughs Mars story told in third person, there was an immediate uproar among the readers, and to this day many Burroughs fans challenge the authenticity of that story as Burroughs' own work!
For the Tarzan tales, Burroughs used a technique of introducing several sets of characters, starting each upon their own separate adventure, and then "cutting" from sequence to sequence in a style very much like that used in motion pictures. Skillfully drawing his characters together, Burroughs would finally reveal the grand pattern in which each element played its part.
In Tarzan the Invincible Burroughs applies this technique to three groups of protagonists. First are a band of communist agents provocateurs assembled from many lands and determined to stir rebellion in all of Africa. Second are the beautiful rival priestesses of fabled Opar, golden remnant of an ancient Atlantean colony. Third is Tarzan, lord of the jungle, who stands ready to face any challenge to his savage domain. Weaving these together in masterful fashion, Burroughs produces a tale of high adventure, spine-tingling action and suspense amidst colorful and exotic settings.
—Richard Lupoff
Editor, Xero, a fantasy
fiction fan magazine.