Novels describing the adventures of white men in the tropics have fascinated western readers since the publication of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe in 1719. Herman Melville romanticizes his account of the Marquesans in Typee (1846). Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883) describes the adventures of the boy Jim and the pirate Long John Silver. Joseph Conrad, who explores the concept of courage in Lord Jim (1900), treats both racial and economic exploitation in Heart of Darkness (1902). Nordoff and Hall's Mutiny on the Bounty (1932) describes the life of sailors in the South Pacific as well as the famous eighteenth-century mutiny led by Fletcher Christian.

Novels stressing the futility of war also abound in western literature.

These include Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1865-1869), which discusses Napoleon's invasion of Russia; Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage (1895), which describes a young Union soldier's first battle experience in the American Civil War; and...