Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

9:23 am 25 September 2018
Around the World in Eighty Days (Oxford World's Classics) - Jules Verne

TITLE:  Around the World in Eighty Days

 

AUTHOR:  Jules Verne

 

TRANSLATOR:  William Butcher

 

DATE PUBLISHED:  2008 (reissue)

 

PUBLICATION:  Oxford World's Classics

 

FORMAT:  Paperback

 

ISBN-13:  9780199552511

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DESCRIPTION: 

"With the words 'Here I am, gentlemen', Phileas Fogg snatches a day from the jaws of time to make one of literature's great entrances.

 

Fogg - still, repressed, English - assures the members of the exclusive Reform Club that he will circumnavigate the world in eighty days.  Together with an irrepressible Frenchman and an Indian beauty he slices through jungles and climbs over snowbound passes, even across an entire isthmus - only to get back five minutes late.  He confronts despair and suicide, but his Indian companion makes a new man of him, able to face even his club again.

 

William Butcher's stylish new translation of Around the World in Eighty Days moves as fast and as brilliantly as Fogg's epic journey.  This edition also presents important discoveries about Verne's manuscripts, his sources, and cultural references."

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This is a fun, and occasionally nail-biting, romp around the World in 80 days - more or less.  Passepartout is a hilarious character that nicely complements Fogg's rather enigmatic personality.  William Butcher's translation is beautifully done, making it hard to tell that this is a translation from the original French.   All the extra goodies (introduction, notes, chronology, appendices) make this critical edition a treat.

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