Kinderen van Kapitein Grant

A message in a bottle washes ashore on the Scottish coast, bearing desperate words from Captain Grant: his ship has been destroyed, and he survives somewhere in the wilds of the Southern Hemisphere. His two children, Mary and Robert, refuse to accept their father is lost. Together with a wealthy Scottish lord, the children's devoted guardian, and a charmingly absent-minded French professor, they mount an expedition across three continents to bring him home. What follows is a globe-trotting adventure that sweeps from the cliffs of Scotland to the pampas of Argentina, the snow-swept peaks of the Andes, and the volcanic shores of Chile. Verne constructs his tale as both a breathless race against time and a dazzling tour of the mid-nineteenth century world, filling every chapter with hard-won geographical fact and the quiet heroism of ordinary people who refuse to surrender hope. The novel pulses with tenderness too: the children's devotion to their father, the found family that forms between strangers, the belief that courage and curiosity can chart a path through any wilderness. This is Verne at his most expansive and his most heartwarming.