Adventure · Travel
Around the World in Eighty Days
An unflappable English gentleman bets his fortune that he can circle the globe in eighty days, with a detective on his heels.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
A wager at the Reform Club
Phileas Fogg lives by the clock. He eats at the same table every day and dismisses a servant for bringing his shaving water two degrees too cold. Then, over a game of cards at his London club, he bets twenty thousand pounds that he can go around the world in eighty days, and leaves that same evening with his new valet, Passepartout, and a bag full of banknotes. Close behind comes Detective Fix, convinced that Fogg is a bank robber on the run. Jules Verne published the novel in 1872, soon after the Suez Canal and new railways across India and America had made such a trip thinkable.
Why it works for learners
The book is a chain of places, and every stop brings practical vocabulary: tickets, timetables, delays, hotels, money, weather, days of the week. You practice numbers, time and distance almost without noticing, because the plot depends on all three. The structure is simple and repeats: a new country, a new problem, a solution, the next departure. Passepartout’s misadventures add comedy that comes through at every level. Lexo books download to your device, so you can read this one on an actual train.
Which level to start at
A2 works well. The plot is a straight line and the stakes are always plain: will they make the next boat? B1 and B2 bring back more of Fix’s scheming and Verne’s dry jokes about English manners. If you’re learning French, it makes a natural first French classic.
Read next
- Five Weeks in a Balloon, Verne’s first novel, a crossing of Africa by air
- Michael Strogoff, a courier’s race across Siberia
- The Thirty-Nine Steps, another chase against the clock
