Karl May

Karl Friedrich May (/maɪ/ MY, German: [kaʁl ˈmaɪ] ^ⓘ; 25 February 1842 – 30 March 1912) was a German author known for writing often in first-person narrative about travels and adventures, mostly set in the American Old West or the Orient and Middle East, but also in Latin America, China and within Germany. For a time he insisted that he actually had travelled to the West and was called Old Shatterhand there, while in the Ottoman Empire he was called Kara Ben Nemsi, and posed in costumes.

May is one of the best-selling German writers of all time, with about 200 million copies sold worldwide. A series of Karl May film adaptations was successful in the 1960s.