Kéraban-le-têtu

When the Ottoman government imposes a new tax on tobacco, Kéraban, a Turkish merchant whose legendary stubbornness borders on the pathological, declares he'd rather travel the entire circumference of the Black Sea than pay a single piastre. Thus begins an epic comedic journey across continents, as Kéraban drags his long-suffering Dutch client, Van Mitten, through Constantinople, the Caucasus, the Crimea, and beyond, by boat, carriage, and any other conveyance that catches his obstinate fancy. Verne constructs a brilliant comedy of contrasts: Kéraban's immovable Turkish pride against Van Mitten's lax Dutch temperament; the absurd rigidity of bureaucratic tax law against the fluid chaos of actual travel. What emerges is one of Verne's most playful novels, a tale that treats the Black Sea as a stage for human folly, where a man's refusal to concede a point becomes a journey of mythic absurdity. The humor remains sharp, the observations about cultural difference still resonate, and the sheer chutzpah of traveling around an entire sea to avoid a tax feels oddly, magnificently modern.