A journey of discovery by three Englishmen in Africa: Five Weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne, published in 1863. Readers get a peek at the discovery of Africa in this book, which was still mostly unknown to Europeans at the time. The mission of Samuel Fergusson aims to connect the expeditions of Heinrich Barth in the Sahara and Chad with those of Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke in East Africa. Although it is truly a savanna, the novel refers to the uncharted interior of Africa around the present-day Central African Republic as a desert. Starting in Zanzibar, the journey continues through Agadez, Timbuktu, Djenné, Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, and Ségou. Finding the source of the Nile was a major goal of the early expedition. Bringing together the other explorers is the second leg. There are several action-packed sequences that either feature a battle with a local or one with the environment.
Jules Verne was a world fame French author, considered as ‘Father of
Science Fiction’. He was born on 8 February 1828 in Nantes, France. His
parents were Pierre Verne and Sophie Allotted de La Fuye. For studies he
went to boarding school there he started writing short stories and poetry.
His father was an attorney, so he sent Jules Paris, to study law but literature
attracted him. He had passion for theatre and writing. He began his career
as playwright. But after his marriage, for several years he worked as stock
market broker. In 1862 Jules met publisher Pierre Jules Hetzel, it boomed
his writing career. In 1963 Verne’s novel Five Weeks in a Balloon, the series
of a adventurous novel published and after that he never looked back. Jules
had a rich account of literary work, with adventurous scientific novel, he had
also written numerous plays, short stories, autobiographical account, poetry
and artistic literary work. Although he died in 1905 his remarkable works
published continually, even after his death. He is the second significant writer
whose works has been translated continually. His most popular writing works
are - Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the
Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days, From the Earth to the Moon etc.
