Sax Rohmer's Fitting End

Sax Rohmer is an author who is best known for creating the character Fu Manchu. The character was very popular and has been portrayed in film by horror greats Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee among others. The character has also come under some criticism for being a racist caricature inspired by the Yellow Peril idea that was widespread in the U.S. for a while, and unfortunately seems to have made a comeback. Rohmer also introduced Sumuru, who has been featured in a few films herself. While she hasn't been the focus of the same amount of criticism as Fu Manchu, I think that has more to do with their respective levels of popularity and less with the respective levels of objectionability. So it seems like a bit of karma that when Rohmer passed away in 1958, it was from the Asian flu.

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