The Tower of the Elephant: Original Text

by Robert E. Howard

Set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan infiltrating a perilous tower in order to steal a fabled gem from an evil sorcerer named Yara. Due to its unique insights into the Hyborian world and atypical science fiction elements, the story is considered a classic of Conan lore and is often cited by Howard scholars as one of his best tales. One of the original short stories starring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Sword and Sorcery, Adventure, Pulp, Classics

44 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1933

About the author

Robert Ervin Howard was an American pulp writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, boxing, western, and detective fiction. Howard wrote "over three-hundred stories and seven-hundred poems of raw power and unbridled emotion" and is especially noted for his memorable depictions of "a sombre universe of swashbuckling adventure and darkling horror."

He is well known for having created—in the pages of the legendary Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales—the character Conan the Cimmerian, a.k.a. Conan the Barbarian, a literary icon whose pop-culture imprint can only be compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond.

—Wikipedia

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sword and Sorcery is the most accepted name for this genre. Howard was one of the early stars in writing such stories. He had much to do with setting some of the parameters including the elements of “dark ages mankind,” classic weaponry and transportation, and an element of magic or mysticism.

The Tower of the Elephant was published almost 100 years ago and it should be read by any person claiming to have an interest in this type of fantasy. From my perspective, it is one of a handful of stories that form the cornerstones of what other have built upon.

Yet, it also stands firmly on its own with less of the racism and misogyny of that particular period. Here are several samples that I believe will help you decide whether to go further:

"It was no image—it was a living thing, and he was trapped in its chamber! That he did not instantly explode in a burst of murderous frenzy is a fact that measured his horror, which paralysed him where he stood. A civilized man in his position would have sought doubtful refuge in the conclusion that he was insane; it did not occur to the Cimmerian to doubt his senses. He knew he was face to face with a demon of the Elder World, and the realization robbed him of all his faculties except sight."

"Then began a desperate game, the wits and quickness of the man matched against the fiendish craft and speed of the giant spider. It no longer scuttled across the floor in a direct charge, or swung its body through the air at him. It raced about the ceiling and the walls, seeking to snare him in the long loops of sticky grey web-strands, which it flung with a devilish accuracy. These strands were thick as ropes, and Conan knew that once they were coiled about him, his desperate strength would not be enough to tear him free before the monster struck."

This may be my favorite story by Robert E. Howard

[Louie the Mustache Matos · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Tower of the Elephant is a Robert E. Howard pulp, short story featuring Conan the Barbarian. It is the third story from the Conan Collection, and it follows the same general formula as all of the others. Conan gets himself into a compromising situation and he uses the diversity of his skills to get out of it. The previous stories have featured his ability to fight his way out of difficulties, but here he must be a little more clandestine.

The story revolves around Conan having heard of a mysterious gem hidden in a tower. Conan resolves to acquire it, but when a master-thief goes after the prize simultaneously, they agree to work together. (Uh-huh, because we all know the one thing that thieves do best, is share.) Howard’s prose is excellent once again and I felt transported by his descriptions. Fun, fantasy story. (It strikes me that for supposedly low-brow, pulp fiction, the language is surprisingly sophisticated, lyrical, and melodic.) Definitely a classic in my book.

[Jayakrishnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

Conan and Taurus of Nemedia, the Prince of Thieves, gang up to rob the Elephant Tower of its jewels and pearls. This is a great action adventure story with men climbing up tall towers using ropes and entering secret chambers where other worldly creatures lay await for them.

This story was used in Conan the Barbarian, the Milius movie. But there is no spider in the movie. Or the elephant headed man (inspired by the Hindu god Ganesha, perhaps?), like in this book.

[Bentley ★ Bookbastion.net · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read 4 Conan short stories now, and while I'm beginning to recognize that there's a definite formula to Howard's writing, this story was thus far unmatched in terms of sheer entertainment value and the lore it added to the world. If I had known years ago that Howard's Conan works were so steeped in lore and grand world-building, I probably would have started reading these stories long ago.

Set in the early days of Conan's overall story, our favorite barbarian hears about a mysterious gemstone called the Heart of the Elephant, locked away in a tower by a dangerous sorcerer and makes it his mission to retrieve it. Full of Howard's trademark danger, dark magic and intrigue, the excursion is also unexpectedly filled to the brim with a deep lore that expands on the history of the world and the people living within it. The inclusion of eldritch horrors and cosmic horror as a theme continues to be the unexpected surprise of Howard's work so far. I'd not expected these stories to be as dark and chilling as they often end up being.

While the formula of his short stories is becoming familiar, I still think Howard's prose and descriptive skills are unparalleled, and this story was pure entertainment from start to finish.

[mark monday · Rating 2 out of 5]

come join Conan the Cimmerian as he romps about in two bold and bloody adventures! well, one sorta-kinda adventure and the other a short mystery (although really not much of a mystery). in the first, young Conan encounters unpleasant natural & supernatural threats while attempting to steal a precious jewel; in the second, young Conan encounters unpleasant guardsmen & a rather obvious secret monster while attempting to steal a precious jewel. I always forget how much of a thief our boy Conan can be; I guess it wasn't until his later adventures that he turned more towards mercenary work.

this may not be the best intro to the fab short stories of Robert E. Howard, but I don't have a lot to complain about. the purple prose pulp pop of Howard's style is evocative and fun. plus the first tale actually has Conan feeling bad about someone's suffering rather than scorning their weakness. I guess Conan has a soft spot for imprisoned supernatural beings with the bodies of men and the heads of weepy elephants. such a softie, Conan!

this edition is SUPER LARGE PRINT for some reason. it also includes nine nifty paintings by Richard Robertson. Heavy Metal type fantasy illustrations of course, nothing I'd hang on my wall, but still quite a delight to this nerd's eyes. nerd candy!

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Tower of the Elephant Robert E Howard, hearty spooky gripping fantasy sword and sorcery tale, an ancient alien Yag-kosha whose thousands of years old, body of a man and the head of an elephant betrayed enslaved then tortured and imprisoned in a tower for 300 years by an evil wizard Zara who was once his apprentice. Enter stage left, Conan the thief, sword in hand head full of dreams of riches, he annihilates giant spiders there's twisted messy fights there's magical gems, cutting hearts open, shrinking things down thingy, being absorbed into unworldly places. Conan sets free Yag-kosha to haunt Zara forever, that is after he learns the history of the Hyborian world, Conan has yet again and unfortunately ended up with nothing just his sword his life, his undies, and boundless energy to carry on. Pretty good story by Crom

[Drew Canole · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Short story read in The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume 2]

Another of my favourite Conan tales. This features a young cocksure Conan in the city of thieves. After a run in with a braggart in a pub, Conan storms off to steal a gem from a silver tower in the middle of the city owned by an evil politically active wizard. Coincidentally another thief is at the tower that night and they team up.

They Made Some Comics
One of the most adapted Conan stories. When I think Conan, I think evil wizards in towers.

Marvel Conan the Barbarian #4 by Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith
I really like Smith's depiction of the tower. Especially in the Conan Saga 2 which reprints the story in gorgeous B+W with a new color cover of the tower. It's crazy how faithful this comic is in just 22 pages.

Marvel Savage Sword of Conan #24 by Thomas and Buscema with Alcala
-This is another one of my favourite comics. The opening splash page of Conan in the pub is fantastic.

Dark Horse Conan 20-22 by Kurt Busiek and by Cary Nord, Dave Stewart and the Yag-kosha story by Mike Kaluta
-Super faithful adaptation. I really like Nord's artwork but I found Stewart's colors to be a bit too drab for the tower. Kaluta's short scene of Yag-kosha's origin story is really cool. I could go for a Yag-kosha miniseries.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd always assumed, given the time and relative isolation Howard was writing in, that Howard was inventing a lot of the conventions of the genre. I still think that, obviously in a lot of ways he was. But reading this I feel like he must've been at least reading the pulp magazines he's being published in, because aside from the obvious Lovecraft stuff it feels like he's building on other pre-existing tropes and conventions, which i had never really noticed before.

[Karen ⚜Mess⚜ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buddy Read with a fabulous bunch of people

I really, really loved this one!! The way the words flowed and the dialogue felt poetic. I recognized several scenes that the movie Conan The Barbarian took from this story.

And that spider scene rocked!

I can picture in my mind Conan running around with his butt cheeks showing. Just be careful where you put your trunk, Yara!

[Baal Of · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one a bit more than the previous two stories, probably because it was essentially a heist. I liked that the master thief died so abruptly, like he built up his reputation all so he could play a bit part for Conan. And then there's the Lovecraftian twist at the end, that really sealed the deal for me.

[Thibault Busschots · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty strong and gripping Conan short story where Conan tries to steal a precious gem from an evil sorcerer.

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Will Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

“ Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split as a general thing.”
This quote really gives a great impression of the kind of story Howard is trying to write. I can not help but think he would feel the same about today’s online social media culture.
This is not my first time reading this story and I seem to always enjoy it. It is a great one sitting read in a nice relaxing room with your drink of choice. It has great flow to it with interesting and memorable characters. Howard is great and packing such a rich tale into a story that is under 100 pages.
“ The Tower of The Elephant” is a great starting point for anyone that has a passing interest in the Howard Conan stories.

[Graeme Rodaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a ripper of a story. OMG! Spiders ... I hate spiders - especially giant ones...

Simple thievery becomes a rescue mission and the original thrust of the story is turned on its head in a third act climax worthy of the name.

Brilliant in both brevity and completeness of technique. This story is a showcase of story telling ability that could be used as a text-book example of 'how to do it.'

5 'Cosmic Horror Tragic' stars

[Manuel Alfredo Collado · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este es uno de los relatos de Conan más reconocidos. Personalmente no me ha parecido tan ideal, pero sí que es entretenido, y el giro a la ciencia ficción es estupendo. Además el sistema de valores de Conan es interesante. Quizás es que al tratar de la época de ladrón del bárbaro no me haya llamado tanto la atención (me decanto más por temas bélicos), pero desde luego es un buen trabajo.

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hindu god Ganesha has a heart-felt moment with Conan. It’s the ending of LOTR where the hobbits have to go through the cave with the spider. Conan interrupts a man meditating.

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story really serves to flesh out the lore and history of Conan's world, adding a ton of context and emotional value to all of the previous stories as well as all that came after it. Conan teams up with the master thief Taurus to climb the Tower of the Elephant in order to obtain a rare jewel that awaits them at the very top. On their way up the tower, they encounter a massive spider and things turn nasty. After dealing with the spider, Conan makes it to the top of the tower and encounters something otherworldly. Conan’s meeting with the Lovecraftian entity is reminiscent to the wonderfully eldritch encounter in Lovecraft's Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. We learn a lot about the lore, the setting and the history of Conan's age which adds a much-needed layer of world-building to make the stories feel more realistic.

[Belcebon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ha sido mi primer acercamiento a las historias del cimerio. El relato, en contra de lo que pensaba, me ha encantado. Diversión pura y dura. En cambio la línea del tiempo en la que se explica la historia de las grandes razas se me ha hecho larga y pesada. Aunque estoy seguro de que es porque conozco muy poco de este mundo. Si leo más historias de Conan, volveré a darle una oportunidad.

[Sarah Ehinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the challenges conan is presented with in this book. Obviously brawn is the only way through such challenges, but ... Still fun.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conan encounters ancient alien wonders during a heist to pilfer a powerful magician's most precious treasure.

[xenia · Rating 3 out of 5]

If the magic of D&D was inspired by The Dying Earth, then its dungeons were inspired by Conan. Roguish companions, deadly traps, and enigmatic gemstones abound. Mournful gods ensnared by malevolent sorcerers in fantastic towers.

Not as much of a libertarian hellscape as I thought it would be. Howard posits that civilisation (with its laws and institutions, I assume), permits psychic violence in place of physical violence. People may insult, demean, and shame you, because they know you can't strike back. In barbarism, there is honesty in ones exchanges (you wouldn't insult someone unless you had the courage to fight them); in civilisation, there is cruelty (you can insult whoever you like, and if they rise to your bait, they're the one who gets in trouble).

This is pretty insightful. While I don't agree with Howard that a big man with a big sword is more noble than a city-dwelling intellectual, he succeeds in diagnosing a perverse contradiction of civilisation: the manifestation of passive-aggressive and spiteful behaviours out of polite and civil social conventions.

Consequently, he affirms Hobbes and Freud's theses that civilisation is neuroticising, yet denies the state of nature as brutish and cruel. Rather, the cruel and brutish arise out of civilisation. (Hobbes and Freud project the cruelty of modernity back to the dawn of time!) This idea, of civilisation as the source of cruelty, is eerily similar to postcolonial thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire. These thinkers critiqued the perceived progress of Western civilisation, whose privileged status exists atop the erasure of black histories — through the construction of a barbarism outside of itself, as emptiness and lack. (Bear in mind, Fanon and Césaire were writing from and about peripheral colonies, while Howard was writing from and about the centre, albeit a centre transposed into a fantasy past whose coming into contact with its barbaric peripheries reveals it as savage.)

This isn't just an inconsequential sword and sorcery story — it's an ontological revision of Victorian adventure stories, which would find their highest expression in the The Lord of the Rings. In place of liberal-capitalist sentimentality (we 👏 need 👏 just 👏 imperialist 👏 rulers), Howard posits barbarism and amorality, but of the Nietzschean type that ties strength to respect, rather than violation. The amoral anti-hero of fantasy is one of many turns away from Victorian moralism, and a precursor to anti-establishment writers like Michael Moorcock and Alan Moore. It's, perhaps, telling that Howard vehemently opposed Lovecraft's fascism.

I'll have to read more Howard to see if he falls into the Might is Right hellhole at some point, or if that's just John Milius's putrescent touch on everything he adapts.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this Conan tale probably ten times now and I still find it fascinating. Truly the father of Sword and Sorcery, Robert E. Howard was influenced by so much in his relatively short life. He writes here about the bases evil and greed of man, the necessity of bonds with others towards common purpose, and the inherent evils of sorcery. The elephant creature he finds in the tower was once a powerful and beautiful equivalent to a cosmic diety. A base and greedy man wanted it's secrets, and got them but in doing so, ruined himself and live a life in exile from others, locked in a tower.
The speech Yog, or Yogah gives Conan actually is the first place within the tales wherein the Cimmerian grows sad and perhaps sheds a tear, listening and drowning in the despair the creature tells him of. The depravity especially rocks him, as he hears of the tortures the creature has endured for three hundred years. This moves Conan and as the creature wishes, he slays it, quickly and painless as possible, then follows it's instructions to lay revenge down on his torturer. The gem, the Heart of the Elephant is not a treasure for Conan to keep. It is the deliverer of doom upon the sorcerer. I always grin when reading of how the creature regains it's former godly Visage within the gem and chases the sorcerer, trapped within the gem, to his ultimate demise.
This is Sword and Sorcery at its original and best. I love this tale!

Danny

[Byron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the version of this story in "The Sword and Sorcery Anthology" edited by David G. Hartwell and Jacob Weisman.

This is less like reading a story and more like reading a rather bland D&D game. Conan feels robotic as does his companion. Things happen but few feelings are felt except in the opening of the story which sets up Conan well but he seems to disappear inside himself. However, the fun for me came with the reveal of why the tower is called The Tower of the Elephant. There's a twist there, just a twist in genre rather than in plot, that made this story memorable for me. I'd like to see more modern fantasy stories take grand risks like that but I still need characters to do more than physical actions.

[Seth Ganier · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short story following my favorite fictional character, from my favorite author, and it delivers like a sweet kiss. The Tower of the Elephant is a small, massive story about thieves who attempt to steal the Heart of the Elephant, a creature that Conan the Cimmerian has never encountered. What he finds... is a secret for the reader to discover.

5/5 stars.

[Nick LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for free on the Project Gutenberg Australia website. It is primo sword and sorcery. I have never wanted to adapt something into a film more than I do this story, it's perfect for it. There would be no need to expand or change the story in any way, just some great practical and creature effects. Really good stuff. Quick, engaging, and a good tale.

[Mary Catelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely a weird tale. Conan as thief find more than he expected in a tale loaded with magics.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Conan story focused on thievery. Conan hears about a gem called the Heart of the Elephant, and courageously seeks to procure it. However, he is not the only one; there is a skilled thief who has planned meticulously to seize the gem. Because of Conan’s relative ignorance, he soon has to take a cautious approach to tackling the Tower of the Elephant. It will not be easy, for vicious unearthly beasts guard the Tower, and nobody has yet succeeded.

This story was very exciting and concise. Robert E Howard’s flair for descriptive style is, in my opinion, unmatched. I like that, although there was a sorcerer in this story, Conan has to use a different approach to defeating him. The Tower of the Elephant was dark, surreal, and vividly magical. I will be reading his next story very soon!

[Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Howard at his best.

"The Tower of the Elephant" is one of the best of Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan the barbarian, and one of his best stories period. Conan's encounter with the being in the tower is most unusual to say the least. Conan's capacity to feel empathy for this creature reveals a complexity and sensitivity to his character that is seldom seen elsewhere in the Conan saga. Highly recommended.

[Stephen Robert Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tower is not the first but it is one of best stories that Howard wrote .Arnie S was ghastly as Conan he was far too big .In the 1970s there was movie called Street Fighter starring Charles Bronson he then would been brilliant as Conan .
This dark Ghotic story about theft & an elephant God & a dark wizard it's classic

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A supposedly high-level thief gets caught off-guard by a single giant spider? It can happen! It just shows that you can never let your guard down, for even the high-level guy can roll a 1 on their poison save.