Around the World in Eighty Days

This is the blueprint for every race-against-the-clock adventure since: a wager, a deadline, and obstacles stacked with escalating absurdity. Verne turns geography into suspense, making train timetables and steamship schedules feel like life-or-death stakes. Read it if you love propulsive plots, dry English comedy, or want to see where modern thrillers learned their pacing. It rewards anyone who has ever watched a clock and panicked.

1. 1

   Act 1

   The Wager at the Reform Club

   At No. 7 Savile Row, Burlington Gardens, London lives Phileas Fogg, a wealthy, solitary English gentleman with precise, unvarying daily habits. On 2 October 1872, he dismisses his valet, James Forster, for bringing shaving water at 84°F instead of 86°F. That same day he hires a replacement: Jean Passepartout, a Frenchman about thirty years old, a former singer, circus performer, and gymnast, who seeks a quiet, regular life. That evening at the Reform Club, Fogg and his fellow members argue over a newspaper article claiming that with a new railway section in India, a man could now circle the globe in eighty days. Fogg bets £20,000—half his fortune—that he can do it. Five members take the wager: Andrew Stuart, John Sullivan, Samuel Fallentin, Thomas Flanagan, and Gauthier Ralph. Fogg must leave that night and be back by 8:45 p.m. on Saturday, 21 December 1872. He departs London by train at 8:45 p.m. on 2 October, carrying a carpet-bag containing £20,000 in banknotes for expenses. A robbery of £55,000 in banknotes from the Bank of England has occurred. In Suez, Scotland Yard detective Fix observes Fogg, believing him to be the robber due to a vague resemblance in the description, and decides to follow him. Fix boards the steamer Mongolia bound for Bombay, befriending Passepartout to keep Fogg under surveillance without revealing he is a detective, and telegraphs London for an arrest warrant.

2. 2

   Act 2

   India: An Elephant, a Pyre, a Rescue

   Fogg bribes the engineer of the Mongolia to increase speed, arriving in Bombay two days ahead of schedule, where he learns the railway to Calcutta is incomplete. In Bombay, Passepartout enters a pagoda with his shoes on, a sacrilege for which he is assaulted by priests, an incident Fix notes for a future arrest. Near Kholby, the railway line to Calcutta is incomplete. Fogg purchases an elephant named Kiouni for £2,000 from a Parsee and hires the animal's owner as a guide to travel overland to Allahabad. While crossing the Indian forests, the party encounters a suttee ritual at Pillaji, where a young Parsee widow, Aouda, is to be burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre while drugged with opium and hemp. Fogg decides to rescue her. Passepartout disguises himself as the dead rajah, rises from the pyre in the darkness, and carries Aouda away, terrifying the priests. The rescue costs the two days previously gained, but Fogg shows no regret. When Aouda's cousin in Hong Kong turns out to have moved to Holland, Fogg answers calmly: 'It is a matter of no importance. We will take her to Europe.' The group reaches Allahabad and boards a train to Calcutta with Aouda. In Calcutta, Fix has Fogg and Passepartout arrested for the sacrilege Passepartout committed in Bombay—entering a pagoda with shoes on. Fogg pays bail of £2,000 for both, and they board the steamer Rangoon to Hong Kong, with Fix following.

3. 3

   Act 3

   Hong Kong to Yokohama: The Valet Vanishes

   On the Rangoon, Aouda reveals her relative has moved to Holland, so Fogg decides to take her to Europe with them. Fix reveals his identity as a detective to Passepartout on the Rangoon, but Passepartout believes he is merely a spy sent by the Reform Club to delay them and refuses to believe Fogg is a robber. In Hong Kong, Fix confides his true mission to Passepartout in an opium den. Passepartout refuses to betray Fogg and dismisses Fix as a spy for the Reform Club. Fix drugs Passepartout with opium, causing him to miss informing Fogg that the Carnatic departs that evening instead of the next morning. Passepartout, drugged, still manages to stagger aboard the Carnatic, which departs for Yokohama that evening. Fogg and Aouda, unaware, miss the ship. Fogg, having missed the Carnatic, charters the pilot boat Tankadere, captained by John Bunsby, to take himself, Aouda, and Fix to Shanghai to catch a connecting steamer to Yokohama. In Yokohama, Fogg and Aouda find Passepartout, who has been working as an acrobat in a circus troupe to earn his passage home. The reunited party sails across the Pacific on the American steamer General Grant to San Francisco. Fix, now beyond British jurisdiction, promises Passepartout he will help Fogg return to Britain, where he can arrest him.

4. 4

   Act 4

   America and the Five Minutes

   On the transcontinental train across America, the journey is delayed by a herd of bison crossing the tracks, taking several hours to pass. At Medicine Bow, the train crosses a suspension bridge over a rushing torrent. The bridge is decrepit and swaying, but the engineer decides to cross at full speed. The bridge collapses immediately after the train passes. Sioux warriors attack the train near Fort Kearney. Passepartout is kidnapped during the fight. Fogg, with a detachment of thirty soldiers from Fort Kearney, rescues him, but the train departs without them. Fogg, Aouda, Passepartout, and Fix travel from Fort Kearney to Omaha on a wind-powered sled with sails, arriving in time to catch a train to Chicago and then New York. They reach New York City just as their intended steamer, the China, is leaving the harbour. Fogg boards the Henrietta, bound for Bordeaux, and bribes the crew to mutiny against Captain Speedy, locking him in his cabin and redirecting the ship to Liverpool. When the Henrietta's coal runs out during a hurricane, Fogg buys the ship from Captain Speedy for $60,000 and orders the crew to burn all wooden parts—masts, deckhouses, and fittings—as fuel to reach Queenstown, Ireland. The Henrietta reaches Queenstown, Ireland. Fogg and the group travel by train and ferry to Liverpool, arriving on English soil. The moment Fogg steps onto the Liverpool dock, Detective Fix arrests him on English soil for the Bank of England robbery. Fogg is imprisoned for several hours until the real bank robber, James Strand, is revealed to have been captured three days earlier in Edinburgh. Fogg's name is cleared, but the delay causes him to miss the train to London. Fogg hires a special train from Liverpool to London, arriving at the Reform Club at 8:50 p.m. on 21 December, five minutes after the deadline, believing he has lost the wager.

5. 5

   Act 5

   The Gained Day

   The next day, a despondent Fogg tells Aouda he is now poor due to the lost wager. Aouda confesses her love and proposes marriage to him, saying, 'Do you wish at once a friend and a relation? Do you wish me for your wife?' Fogg accepts. While arranging the wedding for Monday, Passepartout is sent to notify the Reverend Samuel Wilson. He learns from the Reverend that the current day is Saturday, 21 December, not Sunday the 22nd. Passepartout realizes that by travelling eastward, the party gained a full day by crossing the International Date Line, experiencing 80 sunrises while London only saw 79. Passepartout sprints to tell his master. Fogg rushes to the Reform Club and arrives at 8:44 p.m. and 57 seconds, just before the 8:45 p.m. deadline on Saturday, 21 December, winning the wager. Having spent nearly £19,000 of the £20,000 during the journey, Fogg divides the remaining £1,000 between Passepartout and Fix, and marries Aouda.

• PPhileas FoggA wealthy, solitary London gentleman whose life runs to the minute—he fires a valet over two degrees of shaving-water temperature. He bets half his fortune on an eighty-day circuit of the globe, risks it all to save Aouda, and wins with three seconds to spare.
• JJean PassepartoutA French valet about thirty, ex-singer and circus performer, who craves a quiet life and gets the opposite. He saves Aouda by impersonating a dead rajah, gets drugged in an opium den, is kidnapped by Sioux, and discovers the gained day that wins the wager.
• DDetective FixA Scotland Yard detective convinced Fogg is the Bank of England robber on a vague resemblance alone. He trails Fogg across two continents, drugs Passepartout to delay them, arrests Fogg on English soil—and ends up sharing the reward.
• AAoudaA young Parsee widow rescued from being burned on her husband's funeral pyre. Her relative having moved to Holland, she travels to Europe with the party and, when Fogg believes himself ruined, proposes marriage to him.

The clock and the calendar

Fogg's world runs on exact times—8:45 departures, 8:45 deadlines—until the eastward journey reveals the calendar itself can be outsmarted. The gained day mirrors the whole story: what looks like loss (five minutes late) is actually victory, once you understand the system you are moving through.

Kiouni the elephant

Bought for £2,000 when the railway simply stops, the elephant stands for the moment schedules fail and improvisation takes over. The man of timetables rides an animal through jungle to save a life—the precise plan bending, profitably, to circumstance.

The funeral pyre

Aouda's pyre is the journey's moral test: stopping for it costs two days and looks like losing the wager. Rising from it, Passepartout turns death into a trick and a rescue. What the pyre nearly takes, the ending gives back tripled—Aouda herself.

The Henrietta's burning masts

Fogg buys the ship and burns its own masts, deckhouses, and fittings for fuel—consuming the vessel to reach the destination. It is the wager in miniature: spend everything you carry to arrive, and trust that what waits at the dock is worth more than what burns.

The ending works because it punishes and rewards the same trait. Fogg's precision makes him five minutes 'late'—and his precision, applied to the date line, makes him three seconds early. The gained day is not luck; it is arithmetic, the kind of calculation Fogg alone would think to recheck through Passepartout's wedding errand. Some readers see a fable about Victorian confidence: the empire's timetables conquering the globe, with the world itself a schedule to be beaten. Others see the opposite—a joke at punctuality's expense, since the hero only wins because he miscounted the days and nearly married on the wrong one. Either way, the emotional landing is Aouda's proposal: Fogg believes he is ruined, and the woman he saved from the pyre offers him a life instead of a fortune. The money he then divides with Passepartout and even Fix suggests the wager was never really about the £20,000. It lands because the final victory is shared—won by the valet's discovery, sealed by the widow's love, claimed by the gentleman's three seconds.

1. 1.Is Fogg's rescue of Aouda a genuine moral choice or another calculated move—and does the book's reward structure (she proposes exactly when he is poorest) endorse or complicate his motives?
2. 2.The wager is won by a technicality: the gained day from travelling east. What does the novel suggest about rules, systems, and the people who master them versus those who merely follow them?
3. 3.Fix pursues an innocent man across the globe on a 'vague resemblance' and is rewarded with a share of £1,000. What is Verne saying about justice, error, and institutional authority?

Anyone who loves a plot that never coasts—this is the ancestor of every ticking-clock thriller. Readers who enjoy dry comedy, Victorian manners, and a hero who wins by arithmetic will find it irresistible.

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