Kéraban-Le-Têtu, Volume II

Kéraban-Le-Têtu is Jules Verne at his most delightfully unreasonable. When the stubborn patriarch Kéraban declares he will not pay a single piastre in taxes to cross the Bosphorus by ferry, he devises an absurd solution: he will travel the entire Black Sea coast by land to reach Constantinople, no matter how many ridiculous detours it requires. His long-suffering friend Van Mitten and the devoted servant Bruno are swept along in this magnificent folly, traversing landscapes and cultures with equal parts exasperation and wonder. This second volume continues their increasingly chaotic circumnavigation, where every obstacle becomes a test of Kéraban's legendary obstinacy and every new locale reveals the wonders and absurdities of the late Ottoman world. Verne's genius lies in using one man's irrational stubbornness as a lens for observing an entire civilization in transition.