Jules Verne 
Five Weeks in a Balloon 

“A classic piece of French speculative fiction” from the author of Around the World in Eighty Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth (Los Angeles Review of Books).   The first book of Jules Verne’s Extraordinary Voyages series, Five Weeks in a Balloon follows the adventures of English inventor Samuel Fergusson and the passengers on his magnificent hot air balloon: his dutiful assistant, Joe, and Scottish hunter Dick Kennedy. Hoping to explore lands yet undiscovered by others, they embark on a four-thousand-mile journey over Africa, from Zanzibar to Senegal.   “The sheer pace of the action keeps the reader travelling along with the balloon. . . . A rollicking adventure novel suffused with the spirit of the age of reason. A definite must-read for anyone who is either interested in the birth of science fiction, or those who enjoy tales of the dark heart of pre-colonial Africa a [sic] la Rider Haggard.” —Snake Oil Review   “Both a travelogue and a picaresque series of adventures. . . . Verne writes geek fiction—filled, in this case, with details of a technical contraption and of a body of knowledge in which the reader is also caught up, by means of the fiction.” —Strange Horizons   “Verne’s first great commercial success, was one of his most enduringly popular novels . . . [An] entertaining, historically important, and complex breakthrough novel.” —Los Angeles Review of Books