The book that invented science fiction. When Professor Otto Liedenbrock deciphers a 16th-century Runic manuscript describing a journey to Earth's center, his obsessive scientific curiosity sends him racing toward Iceland. He drags his reluctant nephew Axel along for the descent into a dormant volcano, accompanied only by the stoic guide Hans Bjelke. What awaits beneath the surface is a world beyond imagination: caverns of luminous crystals, forests of titanic prehistoric vegetation, an underground ocean where ancient marine creatures still swim. Verne transforms hard science into pure wonder, imagining a living Earth with the same romantic awe others reserved for distant planets. The relationship between the volcanic-tempered professor and his anxious, doubting nephew gives the adventure its emotional core. This is Verne at his most imaginative, when the scientific speculation of one century became the adventure literature for all time.
