Customer Reviews

Lighthouse at the End of the World: The First English Translation of Verne's Original Manuscript (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)

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Beware: I will give away some of the plot

The modern action novel has its English antecedents in the books of Robert Louis Stevenson, and, it turns out, its French antecedents in those of Jules Verne. This short and exciting novel could be described as Die Hard with pirates. On an Island on the southernmost tip of South America a lighthouse is built and three men are left behind to tend it. The island is also inhabited by pirates, who capture a damaged schooner, bring it into the port with the lighthouse, and immediately kill two of the lighthouse keepers. The third escapes and must survive on his wits and attempt to stop the pirates from leaving the island until a group of soldiers come to relieve him. Pretty gripping stuff.

I highly recommend this for those interested in seeing the roots of the modern action novel (who would have thought that the literary path to Alistair MacLean and Robert Ludlum would have passed through Jules Verne), as well as anyone interested in lighthouses (the descriptions of the island and the function of the lighthouse are great) and, of course, Jules Verne. It is also great to compare this to Robert Louis Stevenson's seafaring novels, especially Treasure Island, Ebb-Tide and The Wrecker.

The writing in this translation is a bit simple. I suspect that this is due to the translator, who was not an artist but a mechanic. Based on a brief comparison with a French text of the novel, however, the translation seems accurate, and it is definitely readable.

Don't read this book execting all of the "good guys" to survive. It's too realistic for that, but it was great. It had a pleasing ending and the "bad guys" got their dues. If you like modern-day stories, don't read this. If you like classic adventures, you'll like it. Also, it made me feel what the main character was feeling.

One of the greatest adventure books of all time, whose basic plot has been copied by many other books and movies (including the Die Hard films). In the 1850s, the Argentine navy erects a lighthouse at Isla de los Estados, in the southern tip of South America, near the Magellan Strait that connects the Atlantic and the Pacific and in the turbulent waters that had witnessed many shipwrecks throughout the centuries. Left behind in the lighthouse to guard it are three sailors, without knowing that in the island lie pirates with a plot to takeover the lighthouse in order to intentionally shipwreck the ships passing by and take over their treasures. A sailor escapes alive the seizure of the lighthouse by the pirates and a game of cat and mouse begins (if you seen Die Hard, you can imagine the plot, with the guard trying to hit back at the pirates). A great adventure book that you can read fast and easily.

The Publishers Weekly reviewer reveals his intellectual snobbery in mocking phrases such as "tippy tip." But when critics find a work one-dimensional, I often see layers of meaning. Maybe it's because to me the story is more important than the mechanics of how it's delivered. I have not yet read this book, but I've seen the 1971 movie based on it starring Kirk Douglas, Yul Brynner, and Samantha Eggar. As usual, artistic license was taken in changing the main character to an American and so forth, but from reading the plot synopsis it seems the movie preserves the main outline and events of the novel. The movie was brutal, and the dimwits in Hollywood tried to market it as Christmas family fare simply because it was written by Jules Verne. The censor boards forced cuts, resulting in an uneven film with little advertising which failed at the box office. But when I saw it on television I was haunted by the story for years, and just recently paid fifty bucks to get one of the out-of-print DVDs. It's rated PG, but I think it should be PG-13. There is some physical action, but most of the action is spiritual and psychological and boy, is there plenty of that. So don't let the fact that this novel was written by Jules Verne make you think it's just for kids; I don't think Verne considered himself to be a writer of children's books! It's also great to have a more recent unpredjudiced translation based on the original manuscript.

This is a classic hero saves the day story, except it was written long before Hollywood was ever in existence. It was a good, short, and action packed novel sure to please anyone who reads it. No, this isn't Pirates of the Caribbean, these pirates are the real deal and they don't give anyone a chance. Arrghh, a real treasure of a book matey!

Wonderful story of a lighthouse operator who becomes the soul man trapped on a small island with a band of pirates whom are trying to escape.

While it is really nice to have this classic in electronic format, it is poorly proofed. For example, chapters are numbered i, z, 3, 4, ... , 9, to, it, 13. Italics are missing (names of ships, at a minimum, should be italicized.) Footnotes are present (as endnotes) but difficult to use since they are not hotlinked or even identified by number in the text.

I think this translation is a bit more accessible to the modern reader than the 1924 translation by Cranstoun Metcalfe. For example, compare this version's first paragraph

"The sun was about to sink below the line where sea and sky met, four or five leagues to the west. The weather was fine. To the east, a scattering of small clouds absorbed the last rays, that would soon fade in the long high-latitude twilight, fifty-five degrees south of the equator."

with Metcalfe's

"The sun was setting behind the hills which bounded the view to the west. The weather was fine. On the other side, over the sea, which to the north-east and east was indistinguishable from the sky, a few tiny clouds reflected the sun's last rays, soon to be extinguished in the shades of the twilight, which lasts for a considerable time in this high latitude of the fifty-fifth degree of the southern hemisphere."

Same information, but it seems less stilted to me. Maybe the publisher could clean up the ebook a bit so the text can be better appreciated.

This is the kind of easy reading that makes me wish I was off on some remote island playing cat and mouse with a band of cutthroats. Whenever I could snatch a few minutes, I escaped into the pages of this classic. It was over too soon.

Roger Weston, author of The Golden Catch

I was looking for another Pirate book and found this one. Was an enjoyable "quick" read on the airplane. Not as good as Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton, but still worth the read.