Adventure · Travel
Five Weeks in a Balloon
Three friends attempt to cross Africa by hydrogen balloon, at the mercy of the winds and everything below.
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
Verne’s first adventure
Dr Samuel Fergusson, an English explorer, announces that he will cross Africa from east to west in a hydrogen balloon, the Victoria. His friend Dick Kennedy, a Scottish hunter, thinks the idea is mad and comes anyway. Joe, Fergusson’s cheerful servant, would follow him anywhere. Setting out from Zanzibar, they drift over lakes, forests and desert, filling in the blank spaces on the map and dealing with whatever the wind brings: storms, thirst, and a balloon that slowly loses its lift. Published in 1863, it was Verne’s first novel, and the start of his long series of “extraordinary voyages”.
Why it works for learners
The book moves in short episodes, one landscape and one problem at a time, and the problems are physical and easy to picture: not enough water, too much weight, the wind blowing the wrong way. You pick up the vocabulary of weather, height, distance and navigation through repetition, along with practical verbs: rise, fall, drop, tie, cut loose. The three men have distinct voices, and their banter is light and friendly. It’s fair to add that Verne’s picture of Africa, and of the people his travelers meet, belongs to the 1860s.
Which level to start at
B1 suits most readers. A2 works for the adventure, and the episodes are short enough to read one at a sitting. B2 and the higher levels keep more of Fergusson’s science and Verne’s geography lessons, which were half the appeal for his first readers.
Read next
- Around the World in Eighty Days, Verne’s most famous race
- The Mysterious Island, which begins with another balloon and another storm
- King Solomon’s Mines, an African treasure hunt from 1885
