The Mysterious Island

About the book

A balloon escape during the American Civil War leaves a small group stranded on an unfamiliar island with few resources. Their different skills become the basis of a cooperative effort to secure food, shelter, tools, and an understanding of the terrain. Verne makes the processes of making and learning part of the adventure, allowing technical ingenuity to turn necessity into possibility. Yet incidents that the settlers cannot readily account for complicate their confidence in what they know. The island offers both material abundance and indications of a hidden history. The novel combines the satisfaction of collective problem-solving with a steadily developing mystery, asking readers to follow how an apparently self-sufficient community responds when its survival may depend on forces beyond its own knowledge or command.

• Cooperation
• Practical knowledge
• Mystery

Why read it

For a castaway adventure that gives invention and cooperative labour as much narrative interest as the island's concealed secrets.

English translation