Five Weeks in a Balloon

  [fr:Cinq semaines en ballon]]

Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen is an 1863 novel by Jules Verne.

It is Verne's first novel in which he perfected the "ingredients" of his later work, skillfully mixing a plot full of adventure and twists that hold the reader's interest with passages of technical, geographic, and historic description. The book gives readers a glimpse of the exploration of Africa, which was still not completely known to Europeans of the time, with explorers traverlling all over the continent in search of its secrets.

Public interest in fanciful tales of African exploration was at its height, and the book was an instant hit; it made Verne financially independent and got him a contract with Jules Hetzel's publishing house, which put out several dozen more works of his for over forty years afterward.

Synopsis

A scholar, Samuel Ferguson, accompanied by his manservant Joe and his friend Dick Kennedy, sets out to travel across the African continent - still not fully explored - with the help of a hot-air balloon filled with hydrogen. He has invented a mechanism that, by allowing him to release gas or throw ballast overboard to control his altitude, allows very long trips to be taken. This voyage is meant to link together the voyages of Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke in East Africa with those of Heinrich Barth in the regions of the Sahara and Chad. Leaving from Zanzibar, the three aviators succeed in their mission, having many adventures before they reach the area of Senegal. They return to England, where they receive a warm welcome home.

External Links

• Complete original text of the novel from Wikisource (French)
• Complete translated text of the novel from Project Gutenberg (English)