This is basically a travel book, thinly disguised as an adventure story with one of Verne’s silliest plots, one he must have come up with after an evening of Rossini at the Paris Opera.

The notoriously stubborn Istanbul tobacco merchant Kéraban is furious when the government introduces a new 10 para tax for every crossing of the Bosphorus. Rather than let his daily commute between Pera and Scutari put these few cents into the pockets of the Ottoman authorities, he announces that he will go overland. And, naturally, he takes along his dinner-guest, Mr van Mitten of Rotterdam, and their respective valets, on the unnecessary circuit of the Black Sea coast. And of course there is a dastardly villain trying to stop them, and a beautiful maiden to be rescued.

All the right ingredients, and a lot of nice Turkish and Russian local colour, but somehow it doesn’t quite have the flair of some of his better-known stories. ( )