A Journey to the Centre of the Earth

A scrap of medieval parchment falls out of an old book, and on it, in runic cipher, a dead alchemist claims to have found a passage to the centre of the earth. For one obsessive German professor, that is all the proof required. Dragging his reluctant nephew and a magnificently unshakeable Icelandic guide along, he descends into the crater of an extinct volcano, and down, and down, into a world no map has ever shown.

What they find below defies everything the science of their day allowed: caverns the size of countries, a subterranean ocean, storms without sky, and living things that should have been extinct for millions of years. Verne's underground epic is claustrophobia and wonder in equal measure, narrated by a young man who never wanted to be there, which makes every marvel and every catastrophe hit twice as hard.

At roughly 86,300 words, A Journey to the Centre of the Earth runs about 9½ hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

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