Spanish · Advanced
Read El anacronópete in Spanishwith every sentence explained
English title: The Time Ship
Enrique Gaspar · 1887
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About the book
El anacronópete by Enrique Gaspar was first published in 1887. In Passage you read the full text in the original Spanish, marked advanced and filed under fantasy and science fiction. It runs to about 101,600 words.
A time machine, a jealous uncle and a hold full of stowaways.
Paris, 1878. At the Universal Exhibition, huge crowds cheer Don Sindulfo García, a fussy little scientist from Zaragoza who has built the Anacronópete, a gigantic flying iron ship that travels backwards in time. His real motive is anything but scientific: he wants to marry his young niece and ward, Clara, and dreams of reaching an age when guardians could force girls to obey. His friend Benjamín, a brilliant linguist, has his own goal: to discover the ancient Chinese secret of immortality.
But Clara loves her cousin Luis, a captain of hussars, and her cheeky maid Juanita has a soldier sweetheart of her own. When the machine lifts off, a whole squad of uninvited passengers is hiding in the hold.
Enrique Gaspar's playful comic novel of 1887 is considered the first story ever written about a time machine, eight years before H. G. Wells. This edition also includes his sketches "Viaje a China" and the tale "Metempsicosis".
- Author
- Enrique Gaspar
- First published
- 1887
- Language
- Spanish
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Fantasy, Science Fiction
- Length
- About 101,600 words
How it opens
París, foco de la animación, centro del movimiento, núcleo del bullicio, presentaba aquel día un aspecto insólito. No era el ordenado desfile de nacionales y extranjeros dirigiéndose a la exposición del Campo de Marte ya para satisfacer la profana curiosidad, ya para estudiar técnicamente los progresos de la ciencia y de la industria. Mucho menos reflejaban aquellas fisonomías la alegre satisfacción con que los habitantes de la antigua Lutecia corren anualmente a ver disputar el gran premio en el concurso hípico destrozando palabras inglesas y luciendo trajes y trenes, capaz cada uno de satisfacer el precio del handicap y de saldar todos juntos la deuda flotante de algún Estado.
Reading El anacronópete in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Spanish. 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 advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate Spanish book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
