Michael Strogoff: The Courier of the Czar is a Jules Verne novel considered as "one of the most thrilling tales ever written." Michael Strogoff is a 30-year-old native of Omsk and is a courier for Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The Tartar Khan, Feofar Khan, incites a rebellion and separates the Russian Far East from the mainland, severing telegraph lines. Rebels encircle Irkutsk, where the local governor, brother of the Tsar, is making a last stand. Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. He was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including A Journey to the Interior of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days.