Around the World in Eighty Days
A fast-moving adventure of travel, precision, and surprise in which discipline meets chance across a rapidly changing world.
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The book
Around the World in Eighty Days follows the precise and seemingly emotionless Phileas Fogg, who undertakes a wager to circumnavigate the globe within an astonishingly short time. Accompanied by the lively Passepartout, Fogg moves through a world shaped by steamships, railways, schedules, and imperial connections. Yet the journey is constantly disrupted by delay, misunderstanding, pursuit, and unexpected attachments. Jules Verne turns global travel into a narrative of suspense and transformation, showing how measured order collides with the unpredictability of lived experience. Beneath its brisk surface, the novel reflects on time, modern mobility, and the contrast between rigid habit and human spontaneity.
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Significance
This novel is one of Verne’s most accessible and enduring works, celebrated for its pace, charm, and inventive use of modern travel as narrative structure. It captures the nineteenth century’s fascination with speed, technology, and global interconnectedness while preserving a sense of play and unpredictability. Its continuing appeal lies in the balance between mechanical precision and emotional surprise: the world may be measured, but it cannot be fully controlled.
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Fragments from this book
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Calling one of his lieutenants, he was on the point of ordering a reconnaissance, when gunshots were heard. The soldiers rushed out of the fort, and half a mile off they…
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Passepartout jumped off the box and followed his master, who, after paying the cabman, was about to enter the station, when a poor beggar-woman, with a child in her arms…
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Sir Francis, recognising the statue, whispered, “The goddess Kali; the goddess of love and death.” “Of death, perhaps,” muttered back Passepartout, “but of love—that ugl…
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As for Captain Speedy, he was shut up in his cabin under lock and key, and was uttering loud cries, which signified an anger at once pardonable and excessive. Phileas Fo…
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The train stopped, at eight o’clock, in the midst of a glade some fifteen miles beyond Rothal, where there were several bungalows, and workmen’s cabins. The conductor, p…
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The coal has given out.” “Burn my vessel!” cried Captain Speedy, who could scarcely pronounce the words. “A vessel worth fifty thousand dollars!” “Here are sixty thousan…
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They hastened into the forest, followed by the soldiers, who fired a volley after the fugitives; but the latter rapidly increased the distance between them, and ere long…
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“Why, he’s made of iron!” exclaimed the general, gazing admiringly on Kiouni. “Of forged iron,” replied Passepartout, as he set about preparing a hasty breakfast. Copses…
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This thought haunted him, and he never ceased cursing his miserable folly. Finding himself too wretched to remain alone, he knocked at Aouda’s door, went into her room, …
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“Well, that’s enough,” said the Honourable William Batulcar. He was engaged to act in the celebrated Japanese troupe. It was not a very dignified position, but within a …
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Calcutta was reached at seven in the morning, and the packet left for Hong Kong at noon; so that Phileas Fogg had five hours before him. According to his journal, he was…
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Several had departure signals, and were preparing to put to sea at morning tide; for in this immense and admirable port there is not one day in a hundred that vessels do…