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The Sheik is a 1919 novel by Edith Maude Hull, an English novelist of the early twentieth century. It was the first of a series of novels she wrote with desert settings that set off a major revival of the "desert romance" genre of romantic fiction. It was a huge best-seller and the most popular of her books, and it served as the basis for the film of the same name starring Rudolph Valentino in the title role.The novel opens in a hotel in the Algerian city of Biskra. A dance is being held, hosted by a young woman named Diana Mayo and her brother, Sir Aubrey Mayo. It transpires that Diana is planning to leave on a month-long trip into the desert, taking no one with her but an Arab guide. Nobody thinks this is a sensible idea, and Lady Conway-a real person who appears in the book as a minor character-disapprovingly attributes Diana's adventurous plan to her "scandalous" upbringing. Diana's mother had died giving birth to her and her father had killed himself from grief, with the result that Diana grew up tomboyish, with a freedom that at the time was normally only allowed to boys. Before Diana leaves on her journey, her independent character is further established when she refuses a proposal of marriage, explaining that she doesn't know what love is and doesn't want to know. Once she begins travelling in the desert, it is not long before she is kidnapped by the eponymous Sheik, Ahmed Ben Hassan. It turns out her guide had been bribed. Ahmed takes Diana to his tent and rapes her, an event that happens off stage, between the second and third chapters. Diana spends a few months as Ahmed's captive, being raped regularly and brooding on her hatred for him and her self-loathing. Eventually, she is allowed increasing liberty and starts going riding with Ahmed's valet, Gaston. One day, she manages to escape Gaston on one of these rides and gallops away. She is quickly recaptured by Ahmed, however, and as they are riding back to camp, she is overcome by the sudden realisation that she is in love with him. She knows she can say nothing of this, as Ahmed-who claims to find love dull-will send her away if he learns of her love.

E. M. Hull (sometimes expanded as Edith M. Hull), was the pseudonym of Edith Maud Hull, n e Henderson (16 August 1880 - 11 February 1947), a British writer of romance novels. She is best known for The Sheik, which became an international best seller in 1921. The Sheik is credited with setting off a major and hugely popular revival of the "desert romance" genre of romantic fiction. Hull followed The Sheik with several other novels with desert settings, such as The Shadow of the East, The Desert Healer, and The Sons of the Sheik.Born Edith Maud Henderson on 16 August 1880 in the Borough of Hampstead, London, England, she was the daughter of Katie Thorne, of New Brunswick, Canada and James Henderson, a Liverpool shipowner originally from New York City. As a child she travelled widely with her parents, even visiting Algeria-the setting of her novels. In 1899, she married Percy Winstanley Hull (b. 1869), a civil engineer and later a prize-winning pig farmer. The couple moved to the Hull family estate in Derbyshire in the early 1900s. They had a daughter, Cecil Winstanley Hull. Hull was somewhat reclusive and did not seek the spotlight. She died at age 66, on 11 February 1947 in Hazelwood, in the parish of Duffield, Derbyshire.

Diana Mayo is young, beautiful, wealthy, and independent. Bored by the eligible bachelors and endless parties of the English aristocrats, she arranges for a trek through the Algerian desert. Two days into the her adventure, she is kidnapped by the powerful Sheik Ahmed Ben-Hassan, who forces her into submission. Diana tries desperately to resist but finds herself falling in love with the dark and handsome stranger. What follows is a tale of mystery, power, and forbidden love fulfilled.

Diana Mayo is young, beautiful, wealthy, and independent. Bored by the eligible bachelors and endless parties of the English aristocrats, she arranges for a trek through the Algerian desert. Two days into the her adventure, she is kidnapped by the powerful Sheik Ahmed Ben-Hassan, who forces her into submission. Diana tries desperately to resist but finds herself falling in love with the dark and handsome stranger. What follows is a tale of mystery, power, and forbidden love fulfilled.

Lady Diana Mayo es todo lo que no deber a ser: independiente, criada entre hombres, aventurera. Como se lo predijeron, Diana ser secuestrada en su viaje al desierto argelino por el Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan. Aunque inicialmente Diana lo odie, poco a poco sucumbir a la pasi n del Sheik y l, aunque se resista, se encontrar con algunos problemas a causa de Diana. Si de novela rom ntica se trata, esta es una de las precursoras del g nero, tanto que incluso tuvo su representaci n con el inolvidable Rodolfo Valentino en el papel del Sheik m s reconocido de Argelia.

The Sheik is a 1919 novel by Edith Maude Hull, an English novelist of the early twentieth century. It was the first of a series of novels she wrote with desert settings that set off a major revival of the "desert romance" genre of romantic fiction. It was a huge best-seller and the most popular of her books, and it served as the basis for the film of the same name starring Rudolph Valentino in the title role. Throughout its history, The Sheik has attracted controversy, though this has shifted in form over the years. When it was published, it was considered an erotic novel and variously described in the press as "shocking" and "poisonously salacious."In more recent decades, the novel has been strongly criticized for its central plot element: the idea that rape leads to love i.e. forced seduction. Other criticisms have been directed at ideas closely related to the central rape plot: that for women, sexual submission is a necessary and natural condition; and that rape is excused by marriage. There has been much criticism of various Orientalist and colonialist elements, such as the fact that interracial love between an Englishwoman and a "native" is avoided and the rape ultimately justified by having the rapist turn out to be European rather than Arab. With its plot centered on the subjugation of a willful woman, The Sheik has been compared to The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare.Criticism of the novel has been tempered, however, by other writers observing that women writers of Hull's period used the already well-established genre of the Orientalist fantasy to begin putting feminist ideas before their primarily female readership. Women appear as protagonists in desert romances, for example, and in The Sheik specifically, the reader is engaged with Diana as an independent-minded and defiant woman for most of the novel's length, before Hull concludes her story in a conventional way. Moreover, it appears the couple means to live in the desert - a break on Hull's part with the typical romance novel ending that sees the heroine safely ensconced in the townhouses and country estates of the British aristocracy.Strong contrasts are also painted between the relative liberty of European women and the servitude of their counterparts from the Middle East: That women could submit to the degrading intimacy and fettered existence of married life filled Diana] with scornful wonder. To be bound irrevocably to the will and pleasure of a man who would have the right to demand obedience in all that constituted marriage and the strength to enforce those claims revolted her. For a Western woman it was bad enough, but for the women of the East, mere slaves of the passions of the men who owned them, unconsidered, disregarded, reduced to the level of animals, the bare idea made her quiver.Although this passage appears early in the novel and is to a great extent negated by Diana's later submission to Ahmed, the questions it raises about women's rights echo some of the main themes of contemporary suffragists. (wikipedia.org)

The Sheik is a 1919 novel by Edith Maude Hull, an English novelist of the early twentieth century. It was the first of a series of novels she wrote with desert settings that set off a major revival of the "desert romance" genre of romantic fiction. It was a huge best-seller and the most popular of her books, and it served as the basis for the film of the same name starring Rudolph Valentino in the title role. Throughout its history, The Sheik has attracted controversy, though this has shifted in form over the years. When it was published, it was considered an erotic novel and variously described in the press as "shocking" and "poisonously salacious."In more recent decades, the novel has been strongly criticized for its central plot element: the idea that rape leads to love i.e. forced seduction. Other criticisms have been directed at ideas closely related to the central rape plot: that for women, sexual submission is a necessary and natural condition; and that rape is excused by marriage. There has been much criticism of various Orientalist and colonialist elements, such as the fact that interracial love between an Englishwoman and a "native" is avoided and the rape ultimately justified by having the rapist turn out to be European rather than Arab. With its plot centered on the subjugation of a willful woman, The Sheik has been compared to The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare.Criticism of the novel has been tempered, however, by other writers observing that women writers of Hull's period used the already well-established genre of the Orientalist fantasy to begin putting feminist ideas before their primarily female readership. Women appear as protagonists in desert romances, for example, and in The Sheik specifically, the reader is engaged with Diana as an independent-minded and defiant woman for most of the novel's length, before Hull concludes her story in a conventional way. Moreover, it appears the couple means to live in the desert - a break on Hull's part with the typical romance novel ending that sees the heroine safely ensconced in the townhouses and country estates of the British aristocracy.Strong contrasts are also painted between the relative liberty of European women and the servitude of their counterparts from the Middle East: That women could submit to the degrading intimacy and fettered existence of married life filled Diana] with scornful wonder. To be bound irrevocably to the will and pleasure of a man who would have the right to demand obedience in all that constituted marriage and the strength to enforce those claims revolted her. For a Western woman it was bad enough, but for the women of the East, mere slaves of the passions of the men who owned them, unconsidered, disregarded, reduced to the level of animals, the bare idea made her quiver.Although this passage appears early in the novel and is to a great extent negated by Diana's later submission to Ahmed, the questions it raises about women's rights echo some of the main themes of contemporary suffragists. (wikipedia.org)

The novel opens in a hotel in the Algerian city of Biskra. A dance is being held, hosted by a young woman named Diana Mayo and her brother, Sir Aubrey Mayo. It transpires that Diana is planning to leave on a month-long trip into the desert, taking no one with her but an Arab guide. Nobody thinks this is a sensible idea, and Lady Conway-a real person who appears in the book as a minor character-disapprovingly attributes Diana's adventurous plan to her "scandalous" upbringing. Diana's mother had died giving birth to her and her father had killed himself from grief, with the result that Diana grew up tomboyish, with a freedom that at the time was normally only allowed to boys. Before Diana leaves on her journey, her independent character is further established when she refuses a proposal of marriage, explaining that she doesn't know what love is and doesn't want to know. Once she begins travelling in the desert, it is not long before she is kidnapped by the eponymous Sheik, Ahmed Ben Hassan.