Jules Verne
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne recounts the adventures of Phileas Fogg, the unforgettable, unflappable, stiff-upper-lip English man who travels around the world with his trusty valet, Passepartout.
While playing a card game with his friends in the Reform Club, Fogg calmly announces he can travel around the world in eighty days. His companions refute his claim, and a wager is set for the princely sum of twenty thousand pounds. The wager begins that day. Fogg insists on finishing the card game before setting home to announce to his astonished valet to pack his belongings in preparation for a trip around the world. And so the adventure begins.
Fogg and Passepartout travel to exotic locations, including India, China, Hong Kong, and North America. They travel in whatever means of transportation is available, whether it is by steam ship, train, elephant, and even a sledge that hurtles across the snow. They are on a tight schedule, missing their connections on more than one occasion. Somehow, Fogg finds alternatives to get him where he needs to be. Along the way, they intervene in a suttee by rescuing an Indian woman from being burned alive on her deceased husband’s funeral pyre. They are chased by priests in India and attacked by Sioux in Nebraska. They are stalked in their travels by a detective who is convinced Fogg is a bank robber. And all the while, time’s winged chariot ticks loudly in the background.
This delightful classic, first published in 1872, has held up well over time. Adventure, excitement, exotic locales, cultural contexts, interesting observations, glimpses into an era long gone, and a cast of colorful characters make this a light, refreshing, and thoroughly enjoyable read, one that has survived the test of time with flying colors.
Highly recommended.