- Verne, Jules.
Le Château
des Carpathes.
Paris: Poche, [1892] 1976.
ISBN 978-2-253-01329-7.
-
This is one of Jules Verne's later novels, originally published in
1892, and is considered “minor Verne”, which is to say
it's superior to about 95% of science and adventure fiction by other
authors. Five years before Bram Stoker penned
Dracula,
Verne takes us to a looming, gloomy, and abandoned (or is it?)
castle on a Carpathian peak in Transylvania, to which the
superstitious residents of nearby villages attribute all
kinds of supernatural goings on. Verne is clearly having
fun with the reader in this book, which reads like a mystery,
but what is mysterious is not whodunit, but rather what genre
of book you're reading: is it a ghost story, tale
of the supernatural, love triangle, mad scientist yarn,
or something else? Verne manages to keep all of these balls
in the air until the last thirty pages or so, when all is
revealed and resolved. It's plenty of fun getting there, as
the narrative is rich with the lush descriptive prose and
expansive vocabulary for which Verne is renowned. It wouldn't be
a Jules Verne novel without at least one stunning throwaway
prediction of future technology; here it's the video telephone,
to which he gives the delightful name
“téléphote”.
A public domain
electronic text edition
is available from
Project Gutenberg
in a variety of formats.
A (pricey) English translation is available. I
have not read it and cannot vouch for its faithfulness to
Verne's text.
June 2009 