Friday, May 09, 2008

10. Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

Journey to the Centre of the Earth picture

Again, a really cheap buy. I probably should have done my research first (actually probably should have sucked it up and read the original in french) because I'm pretty positive this is one of the many badly-translated, brutally chopped english versions of Verne's books. His books were translated as children's books and had a lot of their heart removed from them. It was only recently that proper, faithful translations had been released and I'm pretty sure this wasn't one of them.

It was still an interesting book that moved forward very steadily and intriguingly. It is taken from the perspective of a young man who follows his scientist uncle to discover the centre of the earth. There is a lot of traveling and not a lot of conflict, but the voyage is quite fantastic and the ideas imaginative, so you get caught up in it. I think I owe Verne a second, proper read.

1 comment:

WeSailFurther said...

"His books were translated as children's books and had a lot of their heart removed from them."

Same thing happened to Swift's Gulliver's Travels.