Around the World in Eighty Days
Classical Stories · No. 90 — A bet against the clock with the whole world as the racetrack.
- Classical Stories
- 48 min
- Ages 15–99
- 7 chapters
About this audiobook
Phileas Fogg, a wealthy, punctual, utterly unflappable London gentleman, wagers half his fortune at his club that he can travel around the entire world in eighty days, and departs that very evening with his lively French valet, Passepartout. Their route runs by steamer and railway across Suez, India, Hong Kong, Japan, the Pacific, and America, and back — a race against the calendar in which every missed connection is a catastrophe. Along the way Fogg calmly rescues a woman, Aouda, from danger in India (by elephant, no less), improvises across broken railways and stranded ships, and is shadowed the whole way by Detective Fix, who is convinced the cool Mr. Fogg is a fleeing bank robber and keeps trying to delay him. It comes down to the final hour — and a twist about time zones and the direction of travel that gives Fogg back the day he thought he'd lost.
Why it's worth a listen
A precise, unflappable English gentleman wagers his entire fortune that he can circle the whole globe in exactly eighty days — and sets off with his excitable new manservant on a breathless race by steamship, train, elephant, and sledge, with a detective wrongly convinced he's a bank robber dogging his every step. Jules Verne's beloved adventure: a thrilling dash around a suddenly-connected world, and a study in whether ice-cold logic is really enough.
A question to keep
Is life best met with cool, exact calm — or does it take a little warmth and daring too?
Chapters
- The Tick of the Clock and the Great Wager
- The Shadow on the Red Sea
- The Broken Line and the Elephant's Path
- Across the Great East
- Iron Rails and Winter Winds
- The Eighty-First Day
- A Question to Keep