The Island of Doctor Moreau is one of the foundational works of science fiction, but it's also appallingly racist. This decentering of the white gaze is a sorely needed change to the classic story.

The anomalous, menacing thing to fear is not the tropical heat of the wilderness, but the extremes of coldness that the civilized mind is capable of. Contra Wells, nature is not described with the tools of narrative estrangement, as an anomalous place, full of forbidden mysteries here nature is simply home. Instead of using an outsider perspective that follows the white man as he enters the jungle and then runs for his life, this novel is told from the jungle, without the othering that so often occurs in adventure fiction written from Europe. It's now the locals who get to tell the story. The first chapter deliberately declares this shift in the place of enunciation, when one of Moreau's hybrids asks, 'what does an Englishman know about managing anything here? There are no jungles in England.' In a new version of the story, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, author Silvia Moreno-Garcia takes that premise and turns it on its head: no, when the white man sets foot in the tropic, the dangerous thing about that interaction is not the tropic no, the locals are not aggressive by nature, but they won't take kindly to attempts at enslavement and no, home sweet home is not only to be found in the drawing rooms of Europe. Wells, bears several hallmarks typical of Victorian adventure fiction: a properly educated Englishman ventures into the scary jungle and is quickly forced to dodge the infighting of the locals before he makes an eager return to modern civilization. The original book that inspired it, The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. Is this novel a retelling, a remake, a reimagining, a reboot, a requel? I'd call it a reclaiming.

The daughter of doctor moreau review