150 years of Jules Verne's novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”

Jules Verne (1828 - 1905) - French writer, classic adventure literature, one of the founders of the science fiction genre.

Member of the French Geographical Society. According to UNESCO statistics, the books of Jules Verne rank second in translation in the world, second only to the works of Agatha Christie.

“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” is a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne, first published from March 20, 1869 to June 20, 1870 in Magasin d’éducation et de récréation and published in a separate publication in 1870. The story of the fictional captain Nemo and his submarine "Nautilus" according to one of his passengers, Professor Pierre Aronax of the Museum of Natural History.

The name of the novel refers to the distance traveled under the surface of the sea, and not to the depth of the dive, since 20,000 leagues is about 110 thousand kilometers, or about 9 diameters of the Earth. The greatest depth mentioned in the book is 4 leagues (that is, about 22 km: almost half the depth of the Mariana Trench — the deepest place in the world). The original name speaks of the plural seas, meaning the "seven seas" by which the characters of the novel floated.

The novel was repeatedly screened, including in the USSR - a three-part television film "Captain Nemo".

The first film adaptation of the novel took place in the United States on December 24, 1916, the film was called “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” directed by Stuart Peyton.