The Extraordinary Travels of Saturnen Farandul

Journeys, sailings, and flights to five or six parts of the world, encounters with Captain Nemo and Phileas Fogg, ingenious inventions and ordinary resourcefulness, unattainable goals and unexpected luck: “The Extraordinary Travels of Saturnen Farandul to 5 or 6 parts of the world and to all countries, known and even unknown to Mr. Jules Verne” (1879) — this is a witty parody of the books of Jules Verne and an original specimen of the “graphic novel” of the last third of the 19th century.
The French writer and artist Albert Robida (1848–1926) is known as the author of illustrated futurological novels, in which he predicted many realities not only of the 20th but also of the 21st century: from everyday life (television and remote shopping) to technological disasters.
However, “The Extraordinary Travels” — this is a book about the 19th century, where fantasy is overshadowed by phantasmagoria: what happens is so incredible that it seems at the same time funny and frightening, amazing and banal, new and familiar from childhood.
Robida considered Jules Verne his teacher, but he did not blindly imitate him, rather he complemented and reinterpreted old plots and even anticipated some findings of writers of the next century. Thus, the novel about Saturnen Farandul — an adventurer raised by monkeys in distant jungles, was written almost forty years before the famous stories about Tarzan by E. Burroughs.
This edition reproduces the complete set of author’s illustrations for the novel (455 illustrations).