The Mysterious Island

By: Jules Verne

Narrated by: Bill Homewood

The year is 1866; the American Civil War is at its height. Five prisoners of war hatch an audacious plan to escape their camp by balloon. After a perilous 6,000-mile journey in a fierce storm, they are ‘shipwrecked’ on an unknown Pacific island. What follows is a thrilling tale of resourcefulness, courage and suspense. Together with our heroes we learn to hunt, to make weapons and pottery, to calculate our position by the sun, to extract iron and even to make explosives from the island’s remarkable natural resources. As in all Verne’s novels, the plot is packed with unexpected and tantalising mysteries–above all, who is the invisible benefactor who repeatedly saves our heroes from certain death?

Public Domain (P)2023 Naxos AudioBooks UK Ltd.

The Mysterious Island

This is the first time I’ve heard or read the version of this story that was written by Jules Verne. It was much better than the Hollywood b monster movies with dinosaurs, giant extinct birds and other creatures. The Mysterious Island proved to be a deserted island somewhere in the vicinity of Australia and New Zealand where our castaways end up. Great story.

Couldn’t suspend my disbelief

I thought because it was based on a true story it would be mostly the actual things the survivors devised to survive. But as it got more and more fantastical with less and less time spent on actual details (smelting iron and then steel with no tools) i finally looked up the true story and realized this was nothing more than made up. Just to have a guy in survivors who arrived with an encyclopedic knowledge of chemistry, forging, botany, masonry… you name it. It was an exercise in making up the most extreme accomplishments someone could MAYBE achieve if they had all the then knowledge in the world at their disposal and even then it’s probably impossible to accomplish. Plus the narrator spoke like the “in a world….” announcer, over dramatic without change the entire way.

Gave up half way.