The Mysterious Island

«The Mysterious Island» — the final book of the «Trilogy of Captain Nemo». A terrible hurricane helps the heroes escape but takes them to a distant uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean. How our forced «Robinsons» will survive in the... island's jungles, what and whom they will find there, — you will learn from the final part of the trilogy. All illustrations are done by the famous book graphic artist Pyotr Lugansky, an artist who magnificently conveys the thrilling plot with pen and brush.
The novel «The Mysterious Island» was published six years after the release of «The Children of Captain Grant». It became the last in the famous trilogy by Jules Verne, which shares common characters. Captain Nemo continues to act in it, who appeared in the second novel of the trilogy — «Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea». The novel «The Mysterious Island» can be attributed to the enduring genre of «Robinsonades», which was pioneered by Daniel Defoe, who wrote «Robinson Crusoe». In Jules Verne's novel, the heroes also have to survive on an island that hides an incredible secret. The writer dreamed of traveling since childhood. He realized his dream by beginning to wander together with the heroes of his novels. The thirst to know another life made Jules Verne spend almost all his free time in the halls of the National Library. It was from books that the budding writer drew the most diverse knowledge. He started writing plays but found his niche in literature only after he began composing adventure novels, richly seasoned with historical excursions and geographical descriptions of various countries. In collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, Jules Verne created a whole series of «Extraordinary Voyages». Some of the works included in it we would now call science fiction. The publication of the novel in this book is adorned with illustrations by the wonderful artist Pyotr Ivanovich Lugansky. They charm with their accuracy. For this is exactly how jungles look with their vines and enormous ferns or the bluish foothills of mountains on the horizon. Lugansky is always precise in depicting the costumes of Jules Verne's heroes or the rigging of sailing ships. Meanwhile, Pyotr Ivanovich never left the confines of his country. The future artist was born in 1911 in pre-revolutionary Russia, in a small village of Bokovo, located on the banks of the Bolshaya Kamenka River. At that time, this was the territory of the Lugansk province. Pyotr's parents were simple people and had no relation to art. After graduating from the oldest art school in Kharkov, Lugansky began working in Leningrad, where he collaborated with the magazine «Koster» and the publishing houses «Detgiz» and «Lenizdat». Surely, the deep immersion in the colorful, virtual world created by writers brightened Lugansky's not so happy life. The war separated him from his family, and until the end of his days, the artist lived alone and quite reclusively, spending most of his time in the studio located in the famous House of Artists on the Peséchnaia Embankment.