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Based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, a man who survived by himself for almost five years on an uninhabited Pacific island off the coast of Chile, Jules Vernes page-turner The Mysterious Island is a tale of five men and a dog who escape Civil War Richmond in a balloon during a storm and land on a faraway and uncharted island where they must overcome natures harsh elements to create from scratch a civilization for themselves.

Currently available only in an abridged 1970s translation and, in full, only in a dated nineteenth-century translation that is stuffy and limp, turning the muscular, breathless tone of the original into something overwrought and melodramatic, The Mysterious Island is restored here to its original robustness in Jordan Stumps striking new rendition. This major re-presentation also features an Introduction by Caleb Carr, and over eighty illustrations reprinted from the original 1875 French edition. [via]