The Desert of Ice: Part II of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras

The Desert of Ice is the second of two volumes of the Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras. Together with At The North Pole it forms the second great adventure story of Jules Verne. In The Desert of Ice the explorers reach the North Pole and we are introduced to what they saw and did leading us to the startling climax of the volcano and a madman's climb. Many critics have selected The Desert of Ice as the most powerful of Verne's works. Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. He was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including A Journey to the Interior of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days.