Around the World in Eighty Days (Paperback - 2019)

Around the World in Eighty Days is a classic adventure novel by Jules Verne. It is the story of a rich English gentleman living a life of modesty and solitude.

Phileas Fogg accepts a challenge from his fellow members at the Reform Club and sets off to prove that he can travel around the whole world in just 80 days. He takes a train to Paris with his new butler, Passepartout but is then forced to continue the trip by balloon arriving next in Spain where Passepartout has an interesting encounter in the bullfighting ring. They finally make their way across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal, arriving in Bombay two days ahead of schedule. They board the train for Calcutta but find a 50-mile gap midway. The break in their journey proves eventful as they rescue an Indian princess, Aouda, who is about to be forced to commit sati—throwing herself on her dead husband’s funeral pyre. They make to Calcutta and on to Siam and then Hong Kong. Throughout the voyage, they are followed by a detective, Mr. Fix, who is convinced that Fogg is the thief responsible for the recent £55,000 theft at the Bank of England. In Hong Kong, Fix gets Passepartout drunk and drugs him in an opium den. Passepartout still manages to catch the steamer to Yokohama. Fogg and Aouda find their own way to Yokohama where they are to catch a ship to San Francisco. The group is reunited, and travels across the American West. Passepartout has an exciting encounter with the Sioux and makes it back to London. He hurries to inform Fogg, who reaches the Reform Club just in time to win the wager. Fogg marries Aouda and the journey around the world is complete.

The novel has been adapted into movies, plays and musicals. People read it with interest and enthusiasm.

Jules Gabriel Verne (1828--1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. He was born in the seaport of Nantes, where he was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early in life to write for magazines and the stage. He is generally considered a major literary author in French and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. His reputation is markedly different in Anglophone regions, where he has often been labeled a writer of genre fiction or children's books, largely because of the highly abridged and altered translations in which his novels are often reprinted.