Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours

A super rich and super exact guy named Phileas Fogg bets his fancy club friends 20,000 pounds that he can zip around the whole big world in just 80 days using trains, boats, and even riding an elephant! With his goofy French helper Passepartout, they race through Europe, hot deserts, jungly India, stormy oceans, snowy mountains, and back to London, dodging a silly detective who thinks Fogg is a thief. They almost lose because of silly time tricks but win big at the very last second, proving you can do anything if you're smart and never give up!

In Jules Verne's 'Around the World in Eighty Days' (original French: 'Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours'), published in 1873, the impeccably precise English gentleman Phileas Fogg accepts a £20,000 wager at London's Reform Club that he can circumnavigate the globe in exactly 80 days, departing on October 2, 1872. Accompanied by his impulsive French valet Jean Passepartout, Fogg meticulously plans the itinerary leveraging the era's cutting-edge transportation: trains across Europe and America, steamships through the Suez Canal, Indian railways, Pacific crossings, and improvised means like an elephant in India and a wind-powered sledge in the Rockies. Their journey encounters blizzards, mechanical failures, cultural festivals, and opium dens, testing Fogg's unflappable adherence to schedule amid Passepartout's mishaps. Shadowed by Scotland Yard Detective Fix, who mistakenly believes Fogg is a bank robber due to a vague description, the travelers face escalating tension as Fix delays them in pursuit of an arrest warrant. Romantic subplot emerges with the rescue of Indian widow Aouda from suttee, while global vignettes highlight colonial empires and technological marvels. Climaxing with a frantic Liverpool arrival one day late—until the International Date Line saves them—Fogg triumphs, exposing Fix's error, reclaiming his fortune quadrupled, and marrying Aouda, affirming themes of determination, ingenuity, and the shrinking world through Victorian innovation.