Five Weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne
Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, A Journey of Discovery by Three Englishmen in Africa (French:
Cinq semaines en ballon) is an adventure novel by Jules Verne, published in 1863. It is the first novel in which he perfected the ‘ingredients’ of his later work, skillfully mixing a story line full of adventure and plot twists that keep the reader’s interest through passages of technical, geographic, and historic description.[
opinion] The book gives readers a glimpse of the exploration of Africa, which was still not completely known to Europeans of the time, with explorers traveling all over the continent in search of its secrets.
Public interest in fanciful tales of African exploration was at its height, and the novel was an instant hit; it made Verne financially independent and led to long-term contracts with Pierre-Jules Hetzel’s publishing house, which put out some sixty more books of his over the next four decades.
A scholar and explorer, Dr. Samuel Fergusson, accompanied by his manservant Joe and his friend professional hunter Richard ‘Dick’ Kennedy, sets out to travel across the African continent — still not fully explored — with the help of a balloon filled with hydrogen. He has invented a mechanism that, by eliminating the need to release gas or throw ballast overboard to control his altitude, allows very long trips to be taken. This voyage is meant to link together the voyages of Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke in East Africa with those of Heinrich Barth in the regions of the Sahara and Chad.
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