Italian · Intermediate
Read Al polo australe in velocipede in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: To the South Pole by Bicycle
Emilio Salgari · 1895
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
Al polo australe in velocipede by Emilio Salgari was first published in 1895. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked intermediate and filed under science fiction and young adult. It runs to about 56,600 words.
An American with a bicycle. An Englishman with a steamship. A race to the bottom of the world.
Baltimore, 1892. At the local geographical society, two rival explorers can't agree on anything: Wilkye, a daring American and bicycle champion, and Linderman, a proud English shipowner. When Linderman insists that only a fast ship can reach the pole, Wilkye bets that strong men on velocipedes can do it better.
The challenge is set. They will sail together for Antarctica on Linderman's steamer, under two flags, and then compete as mortal enemies. With Wilkye ride two champion cyclists, the Italian-American Peruschi and the Californian Blunt, and on board is Bisby, a jolly meat merchant from Chicago's club of fat men, who joins the expedition hoping to get even fatter. Ahead lie Cape Horn, whales, albatrosses, crushing ice and the endless white desert.
Emilio Salgari's playful 1895 adventure is a Jules Verne-style race full of humour and wild invention.
- Author
- Emilio Salgari
- First published
- 1895
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Science Fiction, Young Adult
- Length
- About 56,600 words
How it opens
— È vero ciò che si dice, signor Linderman?
— A proposito di cosa, signor Wilkye?
— Che la spedizione polare organizzata dai vostri compatriotti, è miseramente naufragata?
— È vero, rispose con voce secca, colui che si chiamava Linderman.
— Dunque il vostro illustre esploratore polare, è stato vinto dai ghiacci anche questa volta?
Reading Al polo australe in velocipede in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Italian. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday Italian feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
