Jules Verne 3 hr 32 min read

Two heirs split a vast fortune: one builds a model city of health and reason, the other a monstrous fortress of steel dedicated to building a world-destroying supergun.

Jules Verne's 1879 'The Begum's Fortune' contrasts a utopia with a militarized dystopia in a prophetic tale of the arms race. Sharp, ahead of its time, gripping. Read it for a striking Verne novel that pits humane science against a war-machine empire, foreseeing the horrors to come, in French.

In its time

Published in 1879, during the 1870s, under the sea and around the moon.

Reading it

3 hr 32 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).