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When I was like 12 years old, my father gave me his old Karl May pockets. The wild west adventures of Old Shatterhand and his friend Winnetou were so amazing, I just couldn’t stop reading. The Karl May pockets: by far my favorite book series.

In the books Karl May, the writer, himself stars as Old Shatterhand (written in first-person). The first books are about the wild west in America. Karl May travels to America, becomes Old Shatterhand and becomes the best friend of one of the most well-known fictional native americans ever created, Winnetou. Together they travel America. They fight the bad guys, they save the day and they meet loads of interesting characters. Surprisingly Winnetou dies (I literally cried! That was a smack-in-the-face). Old Shatterhand travels to the Middle East and becomes Kara Ben Nemsi.

I really like how Karl May (Germany, 1842-1912) describs the landscape of America, the native american tribes and the characters. The main themes in these books are hunting the bad guys, helping the innocent and living the righteous christain way. Almost in every book the native americans are the innocent victims of white bad guys. On the other hand, it seems the Germans are always the good guys in these books and it looks like Karl May ‘prefered’ native americans over afro-americans. I wouldn’t call it racism, but it makes you think how people thought about such things 100 years ago. Famous germans like Albert Einstein and even Adolf Hitler admired May’s work…

The back cover of every pocket says: ‘For father and son’. And that’s true in my opinion, these books are not for kids only. These books are masterpieces.

A few cover images of the dutch translated pockets with great cover art: