Invasion of the Sea is an adventure

Adventure

An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written by Jules Verne

Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...

. It was published in 1905, the very last to be published before the author's death, and describes the exploits of Berber

Berber people

Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...

 nomads and European travelers in Saharan Africa. The purpose of the Westerners' visit is to study the feasibility of flooding a low-lying region of the Sahara

Sahara

The Sahara is the world's second largest desert, after Antarctica. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...

 desert to create an inland sea and open up the interior of Northern Africa to trade. In the end, however, the protagonists' pride in humanity's potential to control and reshape the world is humbled by a cataclysmic earthquake which results in the natural formation of just such a sea.

Translation history

Parts of the novel, under the title Captain Hardizan, were serialized in The American Weekly

The American Weekly

The American Weekly was a United States magazine published by the Hearst Corporation from November 1, 1896, until 1966.A Sunday newspaper supplement which published many sensationalist stories, it was initially named The American Magazine but soon changed to The American Weekly. The name was...

(the Sunday Supplement to the Boston American newspaper) on August 6 and August 13, 1905. The first complete English translation was published by Wesleyan University Press

Wesleyan University Press

Wesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The Press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist...

 in 2001.

Publication history

Invasion of the Sea, Trans. Edward Baxter, Ed. Arthur Evans. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, c2001. ISBN 0819565458

See also

• Qattara Depression
  Qattara Depression
  The Qattara Depression is a depression in the north west of Egypt in the Matruh Governorate and is part of the Libyan Desert. It lies below sea level and is covered with salt pans, sand dunes and salt marshes. The region extends between latitudes of 28°35' and 30°25' North and longitudes of 26°20'...
  
  
• Chott Melrhir
  Chott Melrhir
  Chott Melrhir also known as Chott Melghir or Chott Melhir is an endorheic salt lake in northeastern Algeria. It the westernmost part of a series of depressions, which extend from the Gulf of Gabès into the Sahara. They were created between Miocene and Early Pleistocene as a result of compression...