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Title: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Author: Jules Verne

Narrator: James Frain

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-09-11

Publisher: Listening Library

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 647 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

An American frigate, tracking down a ship-sinking monster, faces not a living creature but an incredible invention - a fantastic submarine commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo.

Suddenly a devastating explosion leaves just three survivors, who find themselves prisoners inside Nemo's death ship on an underwater odyssey around the world from the pearl-laden waters of Ceylon to the icy dangers of the South Pole... as Captain Nemo, one of the greatest villians ever created, takes his revenge on all society.

More than a marvelously thrilling drama, this classic novel, written in 1870, foretells with uncanny accuracy the inventions and advanced technology of the twentieth century and has become a literary stepping-stone for generations of science fiction writers.

Members Reviews:

Anthony Bonner!!

James Frain gives a wonderful reading of Verne's masterpiece. He captures Aronnax's sense of wonder, Ned Land's anger, Nemo's passionate devotion to the sea. It's Verne with a slight touch of Yorkshire: Frain's Ned Land sounds more like Sean Bean than Kirk Douglas. No complaints here, though: his voice is rich, steady, and crystal clear.

Even more reason for celebration is the fact that Listening Library - which produced Jim Dale's excellent "Around the World in 80 Days" a few years ago - chose to use the translation by Anthony Bonner. This was first published by Bantam in 1962 and was reissued with some corrections in 2003. This is one of the most complete versions of Verne's novel available in English and is a remarkably fluent translation. (There are more recent translations that are more meticulously accurate - for instance, those by William Butcher, F.P. Walter, and Walter James Miller - but Bonner did a bang-up job, one of the first to deliver Verne's whole novel rather than a hacked-up abridgement, and it's still one of my favorites.)

(There is only one other audio version of this book that is even remotely complete, the Recorded Books production read by Norman Dietz. I enjoy Dietz, but the anonymous translation used there, even though it IS the whole novel, is an awkward one with an unfortunate tendency toward literalism.)

If you're a Verne fan, you HAVE to get this. If you've listened to one of the other audio versions of this novel and came away unimpressed, give it another try with this one. I can practically guarantee you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Then and Now; Still a Whale of a Tale

First published in 1869 by French author Jules Verne (whom received writing advice from both Hugo and Dumas). Some scholars say that Jules Verne fathered science fiction, others say he introduced steampunk; many people's only knowledge of Jules Verne comes from the Disney movie adaptations of Verne's novels. Which may not be a bad thing, (they made the jump to screen wonderfully...gosh, didn't we love the big crabs and squids, the hot-air balloons, the volcanoes, and the ocean and sun in the middle of the earth?) but it is hardly the same thing as experiencing the true tone of his books; dated, but still sparkling with imagination that is entertaining reading.

Verne intended this book to be more science-that-was-fiction -- than Disney's fiction-that-tried-to-be-science.