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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But this man of nerve manifested neither impatience nor annoyance; it seemed as if the storm were a part of his programme, and had been foreseen. Aouda was amazed to fin…
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The buffaloes marched along with a tranquil gait, uttering now and then deafening bellowings. There was no use of interrupting them, for, having taken a particular direc…
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“Thanks, yes, the passport is all right.” “And you are looking about you?” “Yes; but we travel so fast that I seem to be journeying in a dream. So this is Suez?” “Yes.” …
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Is it uncommon for the best ocean steamers to be two or three days behind time? But a single delay would suffice to fatally break the chain of communication; should Phil…
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In going to Shanghai we should not be forced to sail wide of the Chinese coast, which would be a great advantage, as the currents run northward, and would aid us.” “Pilo…
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Content note · this fragment may contain distressing material.
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Content note · this fragment may contain distressing material.
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Fix saw them leave the carriage and push off in a boat for the steamer, and stamped his feet with disappointment. I’ll follow him to the end of the world if necessary; b…
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This is the 22nd, and we shall reach Calcutta in time.” There was nothing to say to so confident a response. It was but too true that the railway came to a termination a…
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The ground was covered by groups of the Indians, motionless in their drunken sleep; it seemed a battlefield strewn with the dead. In the background, among the trees, the…
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That was a good time.” “For the cats, my lord?” “Perhaps for the travellers as well!” After which Mr. Fogg, and his first destination was the headquarters of the Bombay …
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They then discussed the means of getting at the victim. The guide was familiar with the pagoda of Pillaji, in which, as he declared, the young woman was imprisoned. Coul…