Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Three men wash aboard a submarine captained by a mystery. Professor Pierre Aronnax, his servant Conseil, and the indomitable harpooner Ned Land are prisoners of Captain Nemo, a man who has severed all ties with the surface world and seeks vengeance against the nations that destroyed his family. What follows is an underwater tour de force: giant squid battles beneath the Atlantic, the ruins of Atlantis rising from bioluminescent depths, the silent majesty of the South Pole where ice crushes above and whales circle below. Verne imagined a submarine so precise that a century would pass before humanity caught up with the Nautilus. But the true prescience lies in Nemo himself - a figure of contradictions, brilliant and broken, who uses his vessel as both sanctuary and weapon. This is adventure as philosophical inquiry, asking what happens when brilliant men retreat from the world yet cannot stop fighting it. The wonder never dims because Verne understood that the ocean is the last true frontier, and that some mysteries are meant to remain submerged.
Editions
X-Ray
“The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the Living Infinite. ””
— Jules Verne
“We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.””
— Jules Verne
“If there were no thunder, men would have little fear of lightning.””
— Jules Verne
“The human mind delights in grand conceptions of supernatural beings.””
— Jules Verne
“Aures habent et non audient` - `They have ears but hear not””
— Jules Verne
“Nature's creative power is far beyond man's instinct of destruction.””
— Jules Verne
“Mobilis in Mobile””
— Jules Verne
“If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime.””
— Jules Verne
“The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and life-giving. It is an immense desert place where man is never lonely, for he senses the weaving of Creation on every hand. It is the physical embodiment of a supernatural existence... For the sea is itself nothing but love and emotion. It is the Living Infinite, as one of your poets has said. Nature manifests herself in it, with her three kingdoms: mineral, vegetable, and animal. The ocean is the vast reservoir of Nature.””
— Jules Verne
