L'Atlantide
L'Atlantide is a French novel by Pierre Benoît published in 1919 that is essentially a plagiarism of H. Rider Haggard's novel, She. It was translated into English in 1926. For its story, an expedition into French North Africa, passing the Touareg tribe, finds a lost civilization ruled by Antinea, a beautiful, immortal, selfish, and amoral sorceress - who has had many lovers, rather than just longing for the return of her one true love. What she does with all these lovers when she is through with them is in turn taken and used in the Universal horror movie, The Black Cat, and Rumiko Takahashi's character, Elle, in the first Urusei Yatsura movie. Antinea is the ruler of Atlantis. Her name comes from a contraction of the Latin phrase meaning "new Atlantis." This is not as far-fetched as it seems. One theory posited during the days of Classical Greece and Rome was that Atlantis had been a city in this desert, rather than an island. The tale also fits French imperial culture by presenting not only the ruins of Atlantis but Antinea herself as unexpected benefits of French colonialism in Africa. The charactes in H. Rider Haggard's She were not so much identified with the lands they explored. The novel was made into several films; some successful, others flops. Recently a graphic novel was made of the story.
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