- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Littlehampton Book Services Ltd; New edition edition (Dec 1962)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0460017799
- ISBN-13: 978-0460017794
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,272,954 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Five Weeks in a Balloon
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First Sentence
THERE was a largo audience assembled on the 14th of January, 1862, at the session of the Royal Geographical Society, No. 3 Waterloo Place, London. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
THERE was a largo audience assembled on the 14th of January, 1862, at the session of the Royal Geographical Society, No. 3 Waterloo Place, London. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A REVIEW OF `FIVE WEEKS IN A BALLOON' BY JULES VERNE
`Five Weeks In A Balloon' (1863) was the debut novel of Jules Verne, who would later go on to pen a number of undisputed `classics'. On completion, perhaps the greatest surprise is that `Five Weeks In A Balloon' is not ranked among `the greats' and is not published as commonly as, say, '20,000 Leagues Under The Sea'. Indeed, as an adventure novel from the age of empires, this is hard to top. No wonder Verne's publishers jumped at the chance of signing him on a long-term contract. This is definitely a case of hitting the ground running, or should that be hitting the air flying?
The novel's plot is ostensibly as thin as a balloon skin. Daring explorer, Dr Samuel Fergusson, along with his buddy, sceptical big game hunter, Dick Kennedy, and irrepressible manservant, Joe, set out to traverse Africa from East to West, floating in a hydrogen balloon. What follows is a series of episodic adventures, many of which are as thrilling to read today as they no doubt were a century and a half ago.
Where `Five Weeks In A Balloon' really succeeds is in its ability to make the reader believe that he is part of the crew. So clever and vivid are the descriptions of Africa from the air, that the whole journey really comes to life in the mind's eye. This backbone of credibility makes the subsequent action set pieces all the more enjoyable and engaging. Let's face it, a balloon floating over Africa is a ripe topic for mishaps and mayhem. Verne delivers both by the bucket-full. From early incidents of terrified tribesmen firing arrows and bullets at the airborne `monster', it is clear that this will be no smooth ride. The intrepid travellers have to contend with a perilous cocktail of extreme weather, animal attacks and human sabotage. It's all fantastic stuff! I am deliberately holding back describing the big action scenes, but suffice to say, they are memorably creative and have a cinematic quality in their scale and pace.
Other elements of `Five Weeks In A Balloon' work less well. Inevitably, some of the attitudes expressed by the leads towards their fellow men and creatures jar in this more compassionate age. In addition, Verne's characterisation is typically clunky, and none of the three heroes is particularly three-dimensional. However, it is the author's insistence upon placing the adventure in `the real world', by referring in detail to genuine African explorers and journeys of the recent era that do most to mar the story's flow. No doubt the information is accurate and (arguably) relevant, but at times the narrative seems to morph into a lecture. It's almost like peppering an Indiana Jones movie with excepts from an archaeology documentary.
Nevertheless, when it works, `Five Weeks In A Balloon' works splendidly. For those who have only dabbled with the most famous Jules Verne novels, `Five Weeks In A Balloon' is well worth investigating. Read it, and let your imagination soar.
Barty's Score: 8.5 / 10
`Five Weeks In A Balloon' (1863) was the debut novel of Jules Verne, who would later go on to pen a number of undisputed `classics'. On completion, perhaps the greatest surprise is that `Five Weeks In A Balloon' is not ranked among `the greats' and is not published as commonly as, say, '20,000 Leagues Under The Sea'. Indeed, as an adventure novel from the age of empires, this is hard to top. No wonder Verne's publishers jumped at the chance of signing him on a long-term contract. This is definitely a case of hitting the ground running, or should that be hitting the air flying?
The novel's plot is ostensibly as thin as a balloon skin. Daring explorer, Dr Samuel Fergusson, along with his buddy, sceptical big game hunter, Dick Kennedy, and irrepressible manservant, Joe, set out to traverse Africa from East to West, floating in a hydrogen balloon. What follows is a series of episodic adventures, many of which are as thrilling to read today as they no doubt were a century and a half ago.
Where `Five Weeks In A Balloon' really succeeds is in its ability to make the reader believe that he is part of the crew. So clever and vivid are the descriptions of Africa from the air, that the whole journey really comes to life in the mind's eye. This backbone of credibility makes the subsequent action set pieces all the more enjoyable and engaging. Let's face it, a balloon floating over Africa is a ripe topic for mishaps and mayhem. Verne delivers both by the bucket-full. From early incidents of terrified tribesmen firing arrows and bullets at the airborne `monster', it is clear that this will be no smooth ride. The intrepid travellers have to contend with a perilous cocktail of extreme weather, animal attacks and human sabotage. It's all fantastic stuff! I am deliberately holding back describing the big action scenes, but suffice to say, they are memorably creative and have a cinematic quality in their scale and pace.
Other elements of `Five Weeks In A Balloon' work less well. Inevitably, some of the attitudes expressed by the leads towards their fellow men and creatures jar in this more compassionate age. In addition, Verne's characterisation is typically clunky, and none of the three heroes is particularly three-dimensional. However, it is the author's insistence upon placing the adventure in `the real world', by referring in detail to genuine African explorers and journeys of the recent era that do most to mar the story's flow. No doubt the information is accurate and (arguably) relevant, but at times the narrative seems to morph into a lecture. It's almost like peppering an Indiana Jones movie with excepts from an archaeology documentary.
Nevertheless, when it works, `Five Weeks In A Balloon' works splendidly. For those who have only dabbled with the most famous Jules Verne novels, `Five Weeks In A Balloon' is well worth investigating. Read it, and let your imagination soar.
Barty's Score: 8.5 / 10
Format:Kindle Edition
I loved the more well-known books by Jules Verne as a child (generally in abridged versions) and as a teenager when I got my hands on the real thing (translated) so imagine my delight on joining LibraryThing when I discovered that he had written over 50 books, 54 of which were in his Les Voyages Extraordinaires series which was intended to "outline all the geographical, geological, physical, and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and to recount, in an entertaining and picturesque format...the history of the universe."
Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that most of them were out of print or difficult to come by. Imagine my excitement when I got a kindle and realised they were nearly all out of copyright and available to download for free! (OK, enough imagining already, I hear you cry).
Five Weeks in a Balloon was one of Verne's earliest works and follows the adventures of two Englishmen and a Scotsman as they attempt to cross Africa from east to west at her widest point in a hot air balloon.
There are lots of technical details about the balloon, its manufacture and the apparatus used to keep the balloon up. There are a lot of adventures including rescuing a missionary from some cannibals, the balloon being attacked by birds and being chased across the desert on horseback by some Arabs.
There are also a lot of derogatory references to the native people of Africa who are considered by the occupants of the balloon to be complete and utter savages (and of course, all cannibalistic too). At one point they mistake some baboons for natives but upon realising their mistake decide there's not really much difference between the two anyway. The publishers' note at the beginning of my edition says that the book is a satire on modern (i.e. 1860s) books of African travel; so it's possible that Verne was being so very white supremacist in order to satirize other authors of the time but the attitudes of the book do seem to fit with general 19th century Western Europe attitudes towards African people (including a steadfast refusal to believe that Africans could never have built Great Zimbabwe).
Although I enjoyed this book, I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point if you haven't read Jules Verne's books before as I think it's quite a lot weaker than his more famous works. Around The World in Eighty Days (Penguin Popular Classics) is a better starting place and also includes hot-air balloons.
Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that most of them were out of print or difficult to come by. Imagine my excitement when I got a kindle and realised they were nearly all out of copyright and available to download for free! (OK, enough imagining already, I hear you cry).
Five Weeks in a Balloon was one of Verne's earliest works and follows the adventures of two Englishmen and a Scotsman as they attempt to cross Africa from east to west at her widest point in a hot air balloon.
There are lots of technical details about the balloon, its manufacture and the apparatus used to keep the balloon up. There are a lot of adventures including rescuing a missionary from some cannibals, the balloon being attacked by birds and being chased across the desert on horseback by some Arabs.
There are also a lot of derogatory references to the native people of Africa who are considered by the occupants of the balloon to be complete and utter savages (and of course, all cannibalistic too). At one point they mistake some baboons for natives but upon realising their mistake decide there's not really much difference between the two anyway. The publishers' note at the beginning of my edition says that the book is a satire on modern (i.e. 1860s) books of African travel; so it's possible that Verne was being so very white supremacist in order to satirize other authors of the time but the attitudes of the book do seem to fit with general 19th century Western Europe attitudes towards African people (including a steadfast refusal to believe that Africans could never have built Great Zimbabwe).
Although I enjoyed this book, I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point if you haven't read Jules Verne's books before as I think it's quite a lot weaker than his more famous works. Around The World in Eighty Days (Penguin Popular Classics) is a better starting place and also includes hot-air balloons.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Time machine too!
18 Nov 2009
Format:Hardcover
I've always enjoyed the Jules Verne favorites (Round the World in 80 days, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea), but it's harder to find JV's other works, despite the fact that he's written over 50 books, so I snatched this one up when I saw it.
It's the story of 3 men crossing Africa (then not fully explored at the time) in a balloon (a novel method at the time). So it's basically fiction since no man had crossed that part of Africa and no one had succeed in taking a long trip in a balloon. As a result you have to take his geography and even his science in stride. It has been worked out by others that his balloon could never have made the trip and we now know that his description of that part of Africa was fanciful. So it's fiction, nevertheless it's good fiction. And we have to remember that this book was written over 100 years ago! So when I read this book, it is also an exercise in time travel for me, to read this book as it was written, in 1869, otherwise you will be offended at all the non-politically correct events that happen and the descriptions of the natives and the mind set at that time.
It's interesting to note that this book was supposed to be a forerunner to the much beloved Round the World in 80 days and I can imagine Mr. Verne testing out his ideas in this book. Jules Verne was the father of the explorer/adventure type novel and today's authors owe a lot to him. So sit back and travel back 100+ years and try this book!
It's the story of 3 men crossing Africa (then not fully explored at the time) in a balloon (a novel method at the time). So it's basically fiction since no man had crossed that part of Africa and no one had succeed in taking a long trip in a balloon. As a result you have to take his geography and even his science in stride. It has been worked out by others that his balloon could never have made the trip and we now know that his description of that part of Africa was fanciful. So it's fiction, nevertheless it's good fiction. And we have to remember that this book was written over 100 years ago! So when I read this book, it is also an exercise in time travel for me, to read this book as it was written, in 1869, otherwise you will be offended at all the non-politically correct events that happen and the descriptions of the natives and the mind set at that time.
It's interesting to note that this book was supposed to be a forerunner to the much beloved Round the World in 80 days and I can imagine Mr. Verne testing out his ideas in this book. Jules Verne was the father of the explorer/adventure type novel and today's authors owe a lot to him. So sit back and travel back 100+ years and try this book!
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Jules Verne's First
24 Dec 2004
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Originally published in 1863, "Five Weeks in a Balloon" was Jules Verne's First novel. In its pages, one can see some of the elements that were eventually to come together to form such great stories as "Around The World In Eighty Days", and "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea". In this story, Dr. Ferguson creates a hydrogen balloon for the purpose of exploring the unknown regions of Africa. He decides to take along Dick Kennedy, a Scotsman with whom he became friends when they served in the same regiment and who tries to dissuade him from making the journey, and Joe, who is his faithful servant. As one might expect, parts of this story are dated, and some of the language regarding the natives undoubtedly would offend many people if one were not to take into account when it was written. Still, it is an enjoyable book to read, and rates somewhere between 3 and 4 stars in my opinion.
The [other] publishing firm's bare-bones version of the book. There is no foreword or introduction discussing the life of Jules Verne, or the context of the times in which it was published. It simply contains the story, and nothing else. It has a good solid binding, and the print is easy to read. For some reason, they elected to put an extra line between each of the paragraphs, but this makes it even easier to read. All the extra white space also makes it a much quicker read then one would expect.
The [other] publishing firm's bare-bones version of the book. There is no foreword or introduction discussing the life of Jules Verne, or the context of the times in which it was published. It simply contains the story, and nothing else. It has a good solid binding, and the print is easy to read. For some reason, they elected to put an extra line between each of the paragraphs, but this makes it even easier to read. All the extra white space also makes it a much quicker read then one would expect.
a good read
1 Mar 2012
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a very entertaining adventure story. Who needs laser guns, aliens, or evil psychopaths when you have Jules Verne?
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