French · Intermediate
Read Voyage au centre de la Terre in Frenchwith every sentence explained
English title: Journey to the Center of the Earth
Jules Verne · 1864
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About the book
Voyage au centre de la Terre by Jules Verne was first published in 1864. In Passage you read the full text in the original French, marked intermediate and filed under science fiction and young adult. It runs to about 66,900 words.
A coded note in an old book. A volcano in Iceland. A road straight down.
In Hamburg, the brilliant and hot-tempered Professor Otto Lidenbrock finds a scrap of parchment hidden in a runic manuscript. His nephew Axel helps crack the code: a sixteenth-century alchemist, Arne Saknussemm, claims to have reached the centre of the Earth through the crater of Snæfellsjökull.
The professor will not wait a single day. Dragging the reluctant Axel with him, he sets off for Iceland, hires the calm, silent guide Hans, and climbs into the volcano. Below lie endless tunnels, thirst, darkness and wonders no scientist has ever seen.
Journey to the Center of the Earth is one of Jules Verne's most beloved adventures, full of humour and breathless discovery, and it has been filmed again and again.
- Author
- Jules Verne
- First published
- 1864
- Language
- French
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Science Fiction, Young Adult
- Length
- About 66,900 words
How it opens
Le 24 mai 1863, un dimanche, mon oncle, le professeur Lidenbrock, revint précipitamment vers sa petite maison située au numéro 19 de König-strasse, l'une des plus anciennes rues du vieux quartier de Hambourg.
La bonne Marthe dut se croire fort en retard, car le dîner commençait à peine à chanter sur le fourneau de la cuisine.
Reading Voyage au centre de la Terre in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in French. 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 French 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.
