"Around the World in Eighty Days” INTRODUCTION BY BEAR GRYLLS: Around the World in Eighty Days has to be the most crazy, daring and impossible adventure you'll ever read, and its hero, the mysterious Phileas Fogg, is surely the coolest guy in the whole of English literature! Phileas Fogg is a ruthless perfectionist, handsome and rich, a man who lives his orderly life by the clock, and is always right. One evening, during a debate at his exclusive gentlemen's club about the length of time it would take to travel around the world, Fogg says it could be achieved in eighty days. And to prove it, he bets his entire fortune of £20,000 (which is approximately 1.6 million British pounds or 2.5 million US dollars in today's money!). With no time to lose, Fogg and his young French manservant, Passepartout, leave London on 2 October, 1872, telling his gobsmacked friends that he'll see them all back at the club on Saturday, 21 December at 8.45 p.m. precisely. You can imagine that long before the days of high speed travel, not to mention sat nav, mobile phones and instant messaging, this is no easy challenge. But Fogg plans every stage of the trip with ultimate precision, using every bit of his ingenuity and cunning to the very end. Even when things don't quite go to plan he never panics or shows his emotions. But we do get to see a different side to Fogg's character when he risks losing everything, even his own life, to save Passepartout, whose youthful curiosity lands him in trouble on more than one occasion. Around the World in Eighty Days is not only a fantastic journey filled with exotic locations, cultures and suspense, it is also a story about loyalty and friendship, and the rewards these can bring. When I first read it as a lad, I saw a world filled with excitement, danger, adventure and, above all, possibilities. It gave me a great sense of the vast, diverse nature of our planet and I wanted to get out there and discover it all for myself. It fostered in me my love of exploration and showed me that, with the right skills and the courage of my convictions, I would be able to survive all kinds of challenges. Maybe you, too, will draw inspiration from these amazing adventures and go on to see and do great things. So, do you think the eccentric Phileas Fogg makes it back to London in time to win his bet? Read on and I'm sure, like me, you'll be on the edge of your seat right up to the very last page!
Jules Gabriel Verne (8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. Verne was born to bourgeois parents in the seaport of Nantes, where he was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early in life to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).
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