Edmond About 3 hr 48 min read

A young man inherits a mummified soldier of Napoleon, dried and preserved for half a century, and, astonishingly, manages to revive him, broken ear and all, into the baffling modern world.

Edmond About's 1862 novel is a witty, satirical hard-SF and social-SF fantasy. Charming, clever, delightful. Read it for a sparkling French classic of suspended animation, where a revived Napoleonic colonel confronts the strange new world of the 1860s, in an ingenious, good-humored tale that anticipates the whole 'sleeper awakes' tradition.

In its time

Published in 1862, during the 1860s, verne launches the voyages extraordinaires.

Reading it

3 hr 48 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).