If you're going to read one of the most famous and enjoyed novels of all, I recommend this relatively new translation by Frank Wynne, helpfully annotated. Verne's preposterous but compelling story is much faster paced than you'd expect from an 1864 novel, and it's intrinsically interesting; who hasn't pondered what wonders the subterranean world might reveal if passageways led to deeper depths than man has traveled?
The obsessed and brilliant professor Otto Lidenbrock, his skeptical nephew Axel (the narrator) and their humorously stoic Iclandic guide Hans are sketched clear and sharp and their travels, from Hamburg, Germany to Copenhagen to Reykjavík and onward into the depths of a dormant volcano take a third of the book (but go by quickly). In material added after the novel's initial publication, Verne grapples with Darwinian theory, in ways I'll allow the book to reveal.
This Penguin edition also features an introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley and notes by Peter Cogman.
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