by Jules Verne
I often forget that I'm reading Verne in translation. His big three novels are so a part of the cultural fabric that I tend to think of him as British. I've read Around the World before a few years back and found it oddly relevant even though it was written during the Victorian period. It seems like technology is developing and replacing itself at an exponential rate. The world feels small. I imagine that the Victorians had a similar feeling. Between rampant empire building and the advances of the Industrial Revolution, i.e. the railroad, people could move around at a speed never possible before.
The story of a British gentleman racing around the world to satisfy a bet and en route saving a lovely exotic young woman from a tragic death at the hands of 'scary heathens' sounds like the plot of a summer adventure movie. It's short and it's fun. The main character Phileas Fogg is saved from two-dimensionality by well crafted secondary characters. All and all, well deserving of its status as a 'classic.'
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