Michael Strogoff: The Courier of The Czar - Paperback

by Jules Verne (Author)

Michael Strogoff: The Courier of the Czar is a novel written by Jules Verne in 1876. Critics consider it one of Verne's best books. Davidow wrote, "Jules Verne has written no better book than this, in fact it is deservedly ranked as one of the most thrilling tales ever written." Michael Strogoff, a 30-year-old native of Omsk, is a courier for Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The Tartar Khan (prince), Feofar, incites a rebellion and separates the Russian Far East from the mainland, severing telegraph lines. Rebels encircle Irkutsk, where the local governor, a brother of the Tsar, is making a last stand. Strogoff is sent to Irkutsk to warn the governor about the traitor Ivan Ogareff, a former colonel, who was once demoted and exiled and now seeks revenge against the imperial family. He intends to destroy Irkutsk by setting fire to the huge oil storage tanks on the banks of the Angara River. On his way to Irkutsk, Strogoff meets the beautiful Nadia Fedor, who has been granted permission to join her father at his exile in Irkutsk. Michael is supposed to travel under a false identity, but he is discovered by the Tartars when he meets his mother in their home city of Omsk. Michael, his mother and Nadia are taken prisoner by the Tartar forces, but he escapes and the drama comes to a suprising ending. The book has been adapted several times for films and as a TV-series.

Author Biography

Jules Verne (1828 -1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. Verne was born to bourgeois parents in the seaport of Nantes, where he was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early in life to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Michael Strogoff: The Courier of The Czar and Around the World in Eighty Days. Verne is generally considered a major literary author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism.