Michael Strogoff de Jules Verne

Michael Strogoff

Jules Verne

Agnes Kinloch Kingston

Michael Strogoff, a 30-year-old native of Omsk, is a courier for Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The Tartar Khan (prince), Feofar Khan, incites a rebellion and separates the Russian Far East from the mainland, severing telegraph lines. Rebels encircle Irkutsk, where the local governor, a brother of the Tsar, is making a last stand. Strogoff is sent to Irkutsk to warn the governor about the traitor Ivan Ogareff, a former colonel, who was once demoted and exiled and now seeks revenge against the imperial family. He intends to destroy Irkutsk by setting fire to the huge oil storage tanks on the banks of the Angara River. On his way to Irkutsk, Strogoff meets Nadia Fedor, daughter of an exiled political prisoner, Basil Fedor, who has been granted permission to join her father at his exile in Irkutsk, the English war correspondent Harry Blount of the Daily Telegraph and Alcide Jolivet, a Frenchman reporting for his 'cousin Madeleine'. Blount and Jolivet tend to follow the same route as Michael, separating and meeting again all the way through Siberia. He is supposed to travel under a false identity, but he is discovered by the Tartars when he meets his mother in their home city of Omsk...

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Notă biografică

Jules Verne wrote and published over 100 novels, short stories, nonfiction books, essays, and plays-some posthumously. He was born on a small river island in Nantes, France, on February 8th, 1828. His parents, Pierre Verne and Sophie Allotte de La Fuÿe, sent Jules to Paris in 1848 to follow in his father's footsteps and become a lawyer. Instead, he developed a love of all things literary and fashioned himself into a prolific and versatile writer. His first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, was published in 1863 by publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel and launched Verne's popular career with the Voyages Extraordinaires series of adventure novels, many of which established key elements of the science fiction genre. He was an instant success in France and other parts of Europe and would become a respected literary giant around the world later in the twentieth century. Verne died on March 24th, 1905, in Amiens, France. Verne's most famous works include Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). Verne is one of the most translated authors in the world, second only to William Shakespeare, and still holds the prestigious title, "the Father of Science Fiction."