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bibliofagos
(bookworm)
Upside
down, with Jules...
I
must be a very lucky guy as the first book I read from Jules
Verne was translated
by Nikos Kazantzakis. The latter was always present in my
parents'
house library - honouring our home town of Crete and therefore
his language and style of writing was very familiar - along
with "A Guide to explaining your Dreams", "A
Guide to behaving well for young girls" (a paperback copy
poorly maintained)
and a book with food recipes, which my mother always had
to check when making pancakes for the family.
Jules Verne's "Topsy Turvy" translated by Nikos Kazantzakis
in greek language, came wrapped in a colourful packaging -
as for the actual book
cover,
its colourful as well. And what it achieved with me, was a
very good shake in my relationship with books. To start off
with,
it's the first book I read which wasn't in my school reading
list and I actually understood (well, don't expect me to have
understood anything about "Askitiki" at the age of
8). It was 31 years ago, on my birthday. Moreover, as soon
as I realised
that it was the first in a series of 50 books, I developed
a form of psychosis with all of them. I immediately announced
to
parents, uncles, aunts and cousins that the only acceptable
present for my birthdays, name days, national celebrations
and out of
the blue happenings, would be one book from the series (my
wish list since 1974!).
This series was composed by 50 fiction books which lent their
name to the title, but as I came to realise later on, most of
them included a novel or short story which had no reference to
the title. The books were bound with thick card, colour front
cover and an extra cover made of shiny paper with the same design
as the book cover printed on it. Some of the books were translated
by Nikos Kazantzakis and some other translators and some were
done by another also remarkable translator, Paul Minestrel who
was probably the main one as well (I can still remember most
of his introductions).
Oh my, I still wonder if there is something I have not done
to get these books. Exchanges with classmates who I accidentally
found out had one of the books from the series. Saving my pocket
money for quite some time in order to be able to afford one
of
the books, with my goal being to fill the gaps in the number
sequence of the ones I owned already, i.e if I had numbers
25 and 28, I had to first acquire 26 and 27.
I even breached my good manners for my good friend Jules, by
actually not returning a book I had borrowed (and, you have
to believe me, that was the only time it happened).
It goes without saying, of course, that I had read all of the
books in the series long before I could actually afford them.
As time went by, my enthusiasm for this series calmed down,
as I had started reading works from other writers too, so I
never
managed to actually complete it. I only have thirty six books,
out of the fifty. I don't really know, to be honest, if the
series still exists or if it's publishing was continued by
the Publisher,
but maybe in another form. However, whenever I come across
one of the books of the series in an old bookshop, the first
thing
that comes to my mind is whether or not I have it and that
I know what present my children will get from me in order to
start
their own personal library at some later stage. It will be
those...36 out of the 50 books, my experiences of which I have
shared with
you, as this year is the 100th anniversary since the death
of our beloved Jules Verne and here are the 50 titles.
1. Five Weeks in a Balloon
2. Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras
3. A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
4. From the Earth to the Moon
5. The Children Of Captain Grant
6. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
7. Round the Moon
8. Floating City
9. Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians
10. The Fur Country
11. Around the World in Eighty Days
12. The Mysterious Island
13. The Survivors Of The Chancellor
14. Michel Strogoff
15. Hector Servadac
16. The Underground City
17. A Captain at Fifteen
18. The Begum's Fortune
19. Tribulations Of A Chinaman
20. The Steam House
21. Eight Hundred Leagues On The Amazon
22. The Robinson Crusoe School
23. The Green Ray
24. Keraban the Inflexible
25. The Southern Star
26. The Archipelago on Fire
27. Mathias Sandorf
28. The Lottery Ticket
29. Robur The Conqueror
30. North Against South
31. The Flight to France
32. Two Years Holiday
33. Family Without a Name
34. Topsy Turvy
35. Caesar Cascabel
36. Mistress Branican
37. The Castle of the Carpathians
38. Claudius Bombarnac
39. Little Fellow
40. Captain Antifer
41. Propeller Island
42. Facing the Flag
43. Clovis Dardentor
44. The Sphinx of the Ice
45. The Superb Orinoco
46. The Will of an Eccentric
47. Second Fatherland
48. The Aerial Village
49. Master of the World
50. The Kip Brothers
E-mail
: bibliofagos
booksinfo.gr
