Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Penguin Classics

De: Jules Verne, David Coward - translator

Narrado por: Tony Law, Oliver J. Hembrough

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Tony Law, the award-winning comedian and actor who is best known for his surreal stand-up routines and flights of fancy. This definitive recording includes an introduction by David Coward, read by Oliver Hembrough.

In this thrilling adventure tale, three men embark on an epic journey under the sea with the mysterious Captain Nemo aboard his submarine, the Nautilus. Over the course of their fantastical voyage, they encounter the lost city of Atlantis, the South Pole and the corals of the Red Sea, and must battle countless adversaries, both human and monstrous. This new version by acclaimed translator David Coward brings Verne's novel vividly to life for a new generation of listeners.

Public Domain (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Classic!

This has aways been one of my favorite books. It’s one of the great and timeless classics.

Sucker for the classics

Though many find this story to be a classic, not many people actually know what it is about. Twenty Thousand Leages Under the Sea is exceedingly educational and simple to read. Though its less thrilling or dramatic compared to a more modern book, it was made in the 1870s and contains a surpising amount of history of modern events of that time. I highly recommend giving this book a try.

The narrator

The narrator is wonderful and makes the story engaging and easy to follow. It is a great accompaniment to reading the physical text.

Read by Skipper from Penguins of Madagascar

Very entertaining. It felt like I was listening to Skipper from Penguins of Madagascar. Any moment I thought he was going to call out to “Rico”. The performance was a great fit for this book. Highly recommend.

Great story, fantastic narration

I really enjoyed this listen…the tale is a timeless classic. And the narration is fast-paced, energetic and often quite funny, esp. Verne’s scientific descriptions and the voices of Ned Land and Conseil.

Best all-around version

Tony Law gives a straightforward, dramatic reading of one of the finest of the recent crop of translations of this novel. As of this writing, in fact (May 2024), this is one of only two audio versions of the novel using a complete and accurate translation of the novel by someone with credentials as a Verne scholar. (The other is a reading by James Frain that is no longer available from Audible.) Other audiobooks use either an abridged British version from the 1870s that is filled with mistakes or an outdated American translation by a scholar who has since published a significantly revised version (but which no one has yet recorded). In other words, if you want the real Verne in audio, entertainingly performed, this is the one to get.

Multi-hour 1870s Magic School Bus

The story reads like an encyclopedia of plants, animals, and ship mechanics while the magically advanced submarine circumnavigates the globe. Every item is told as if a teacher is trying to explain something about science, and this gets incredibly boring, dry, and insipid by the 6th hour.

Wrong book for Tony Law

It's hard to judge Verne when he wrote in an era where education through literature was a virtue. For a modern listener, long lists and classifications of sea creatures and short geographical histories punctuated by plot might feel tedious. But the translation feels of the era and honors the source material.

Tony Law ruins the experience. Looking at other reviews, people are excited to hear his voice because they like works he's done solo. He's got a great comedic tone and brings silly voices to characters that would be great for another book without non-English words. Instead, it just sounds like he signed on to make fun of Verne's far-fetched science fiction. "You've explained everything" sounds like a joke with a wink when Arronax accepts Nemo's explanation of how the sub works.

He can't pronounce the names of the French characters or any of the French words. For example, Conseil (whose name is never pronounced corretly) pronounces monsieur as monshoor. This is made all the worse when someone like Conseil talkes through zoological classifications. What might be tedious to a modern reader becomes painful through a terrible attempt to mock a French accent.

There are also random moments of shouting mid-sentence that I presume are editing errors.