Audiobook · read by volunteers
Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
Jules Verne (1828–1905)
Read by Scott Robbins, Esther, J. M. Smallheer, Luke Harrison, geofred, Luigina, Kristine Bekere, Nichole Karl, jburby, Dr Speedbump · 40 chapters · 10 h 15
About the book
On the upper Amazon, a wealthy landowner has built an enormous raft, a jangada, to carry his family down the river toward Belem and the sea. The voyage will last eight hundred leagues, and it should be a peaceful one. But a stranger arrives, a mysterious message is found, and a puzzle in cipher begins to hang over the travellers like a cloud. Jules Verne, who loved geography as much as plots, describes the river, the forest and the life along the banks in loving detail. Unlike many of his other tales, this one is not science fiction but a novel of adventure and mystery. A team of volunteer readers shares the forty chapters of the journey. A journey of jungle, river and mystery awaits, with Verne's trademark taste for detail.
Introduction
Jules Verne, born in Nantes in 1828 and died in Amiens in 1905, is among the most translated authors in the world. His series of Extraordinary Voyages, which began in the 1860s, took readers under the sea, to the centre of the earth and around the globe. La Jangada, the French title of this book, appeared in 1881. In English it has been published under several names, including Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon.
The novel is a river journey and a mystery at the same time. Verne uses the long voyage on the raft to describe the plants, animals and people along the Amazon, with the thoroughness of a man who prepared his books from geographical reports. At the same time, he builds a detective-style plot around a mystery from the past, in which a coded document plays a part. The book is notable for the balance between its travel passages and its suspense.
This LibriVox recording lasts about ten hours and is divided into 40 chapters, each headed with its part and chapter number. It is read by a team of volunteers. For listeners who know Verne chiefly for his science-fiction classics, it offers a different side of his work, one in which the marvels come from nature and human drama.
Verne was fascinated by rivers, and he planned his books with maps, journals and scientific reports to hand. The pleasure of this novel lies in the slow unfolding of the journey, the abundance of detail and the way suspense builds until the travellers reach the end of their long voyage.
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