October Books 21) De Zwarte Rotsen [The Black Island], by Hergé

[nwhyte]

After the excellent Blue Lotus, The Black Island is a bit of a step backwards for Tintin; he is shot and wounded ion the first page, and then chases a group of forgers to Scotland by a series of improbable incidents involving various means of transport and defeats a gorilla in a ruined castle, all the while hindered by the bungling detectives

Comments

[redfiona99]

I'll always have a soft spot for The Black Island because it's the first one I ever read any part of. There was a giant book of comics, funnies and other things in our class library and this was in the somewhere. It took me so long to get to the end.

Also, strange sort of language question, but I'm assuming the title is in Flemish. Is Rotsen always the Flemish for island?

[nwhyte]

"Rotsen" means "Rocks". I have no idea why they chose to make the Dutch translation different; every other version that I've been able to check is the equivalent of "The Black Island" and the original of course is L'Île Noire.

[redfiona99]

Thanks. I have to admit to using Tintin as one of my "reading to learn other languages" methods, and I was there going how does rotsen relate to either Ile or Insel.

[resonant]

"One wonders why anyone would go to the trouble of forging Belgian francs in Scotland"

Perhaps to reduce the potential legal risk? The UK's Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 currently has two separate clauses. One says it is an offence to reproduce "any British currency note or any part of a British currency note". Another clause states "It is an offence for a person to make a counterfeit of a currency note or of a protected coin", with no limitation to British currency. Perhaps previous legislation only prohibited counterfeiting British currency?

There was a news item from the period involving a counterfeiting ring crossing borders, which may have provided inspiration. From Wikipedia, "In 1926 a high-profile counterfeit scandal came to light in Hungary, when several people were arrested in the Netherlands while attempting to procure 10 million francs' worth of fake French 1000-franc bills which had been produced in Hungary."