death_date death_place influenced birth_place influences imagesize nationality notableworks birth_date genre image article_title name occupation
25 april 1911 turin , italy luigi folco quilici , matteo mazzuca motta , emilio fancelli , emilio bertinetti , verona , lombardy -- venetia jules reid , h. rider haggard , alexandre dumas , père verne , louis boussenard , james fennimore cooper , thomas mayne 130px italian sandokan the tigers of mompracem -lrb- series -rrb- 21 august 1862 adventure , westerns , historical fiction , science fiction emilio salgari ritratto.jpg emilio salgari
 emilio salgari journalist , writer , novelist
emilio salgari

emilio salgari -lrb- , but often erroneously pronounced ; 21 august 1862 -- 25 april 1911 -rrb- was an italian writer of action adventure swashbucklers and a pioneer of science fiction .
for over a century , his novels were mandatory reading for generations of youth eager for exotic adventures .
in italy , his extensive body of work was more widely read than that of dante .
today he is still among the 40 most translated italian authors .
many of his most popular novels have been adapted as comics , animated series and feature films .
he is considered the father of italian adventure fiction and italian pop culture , and the `` grandfather '' of the spaghetti western .
