Review by Madeline Salmon
Legend has it that an eleven-year-old Jules Verne ran away from his Nantes, France home, stowing away on a ship bound for the West Indies, and was caught by his father awaiting him at the next port.
Thereafter he promised his mother he would only imagine traveling. I wonder if his mother had any notion of the imagination her son was brewing.
Thereafter he promised his mother he would only imagine traveling. I wonder if his mother had any notion of the imagination her son was brewing.
In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, questions abound: Who is Captain Nemo? What price is revenge worth? Which is more valuable to the human soul, freedom or learning? These questions, along with the marvelous setting of the vast oceans that are only slightly less mysterious to us today than they were to Verne and his contemporaries, drive a rich and compelling narrative.
If you're the kind of reader who needs a shark attack or underwater fistfight on every other page, this is not the story for you, but it is more thick with action and suspense than almost any other novel I've read from the era (it was written in 1869). It is particularly delightful if you can place yourself into the mind of a reader from that time period--someone who, if he or she were wealthy, would have traveled on the sea perhaps a handful of times, and could only have wondered at the world beneath its surface.
*Please see my comment on this review if you are interested in a note on the translation.
A note on the translation: I read the Puffin Classics edition because it was loaned to me by a friend. On the back cover it said "complete and unabridged," but clearly stated in the introduction and on the copyright page that this translation was an abridgement. This discrepancy annoyed me, but I decided to go ahead with reading this edition when I read in the introduction that it took out only "the more arduous and dated bits of nineteenth-century science, and lists of underwater species..." After my Moby Dick experience, this sounded kind of nice. So I got over the baldfaced lie on the back cover. I have no other complaints about the translation. It flowed nicely and I wouldn't recommend against it, but I expect you could find a better one.
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