Around the World in Eighty Days

Phileas Fogg, a London gentleman of exact habits, bets his club twenty thousand pounds that he can go round the world in eighty days, and leaves the same evening with his new French valet, Passepartout. Steamers, trains, an elephant across India and a sledge driven by sails across the American prairie carry them east, while a detective named Fix, convinced that Fogg is a bank robber, follows them all the way, and in India they rescue a young widow, Aouda, from a funeral pyre. Fogg arrives home sure he has lost by a few minutes, until the calendar plays one last trick.

Jules Verne published the novel in 1872, when new railways and the Suez Canal had just made such a journey imaginable, and its race against the clock has been copied ever since. Thirteen LibriVox volunteers read it in about six and a half hours.