Audiobook · read by volunteers
Around the World in Eighty Days (version 3)
Jules Verne (1828–1905)
Read by Alex Foster, Alina, von, Linda Lee Paquet, Mark F. Smith, Nadine Eckert-Boulet, SuD, Neeru Iyer, Linda Woods, Marc Tanti · 26 chapters · 6 h 33
About the book
A gentleman of regular habits, Phileas Fogg lives in London by the clock, and his life seems to hold no surprises. Then, at his club, he accepts a wager that he cannot circle the globe in eighty days. With his newly hired French servant, Passepartout, he sets off that same evening, and the journey takes them by train, steamer, sledge and even elephant across Europe, Asia and America. Every delay is a threat, every connection a gamble, and a determined detective is on their heels, convinced that Fogg is not who he says he is. Jules Verne's novel is a celebration of speed and ingenuity, written at a time when the world was newly connected by rail and steam, and it keeps its good humour and its sense of fun. This third version unfolds across twenty-six sections and about six and a half hours of brisk adventure.
Introduction
Jules Verne was born in 1828 and died in 1905. A French writer, he was one of the founders of what we now call science fiction and adventure fiction, and his cycle of novels, published under the general title Voyages extraordinaires, took readers beneath the sea, into the earth and, in imagination, to the moon. Around the World in Eighty Days appeared in 1872 and was an immediate popular success, in France and in many translations abroad.
The book reflects the spirit of its age. In the years before it was written, the opening of the Suez Canal, the completion of a railway across North America and the extension of steamship lines had made a rapid journey round the world seem possible for the first time. Verne turned this new possibility into a story built on tension and timetables, with a hero whose calm, almost mechanical manner is a source of comedy and of unexpected depth. Passepartout supplies warmth, and the pursuing detective adds a note of farce.
This is the third LibriVox recording of the novel, made by volunteers who share the reading. It is organised into twenty-six sections, each grouping a few of the original chapters, and runs to about six and a half hours.
Why listen? Because the book is still a model of pace. It moves from city to city without a pause, it has a clear sense of humour, and it conveys the thrill of travel at a moment when the globe itself seemed to be shrinking.
Public domain
Jules Verne died in 1905: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text