Meridiana
A lost Jules Verne adventure about rival scientists, fragile instruments, imperial war, and the dangerous work of measuring the Earth.
In Meridiana, Jules Verne turns one of the driest-sounding scientific problems imaginable — measuring an arc of the meridian — into a tense adventure of rivalry, endurance, and survival. Three English astronomers and three Russian astronomers set out across southern Africa with delicate instruments and a shared scientific purpose. Then the Crimean War breaks out, and the expedition must decide whether truth can survive when national loyalty turns colleagues into enemies.
Published in 1872, Meridiana belongs to the same vigorous early phase of Verne's career that produced Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and Around the World in Eighty Days — one of his most unusual adventures, part scientific romance, part wilderness story, and part meditation on whether shared truth can hold men together when war tells them to become enemies. This Squire Press edition presents a fresh translation from the original 1872 French text, with an introduction and historical notes.
