Kéraban the Inflexible

A two-cent toll. A journey of 5,000 kilometers. One impossibly stubborn man.

Kéraban is a wealthy Turkish tobacco merchant, generous to his friends and brave in adversity. He has one fatal flaw: absolute, inflexible stubbornness. Once he has made a decision, nothing-not reason, not danger, not the pleading of companions-will make him deviate from his chosen course.

When Kéraban arrives at the Bosphorus to cross from Constantinople's Asian side to its European shore-a ferry ride of minutes across water barely half a kilometer wide-he discovers a new toll has been imposed: ten paras, roughly two cents. Rather than pay this trivial sum, his pride demands he take the alternative route.

The long way around. Completely around the Black Sea.

What follows is 5,000 kilometers of absurd adventure through the Caucasus Mountains, Russian territories, and the Balkans. Accompanied by his nephew Ahmet (racing to reach his wedding before the deadline expires), the phlegmatic Dutch trader Van Mitten, and eventually a cast of companions and rivals, Kéraban faces bandits, bureaucrats, natural disasters, and romantic complications-all because he refused to pay two cents.

Jules Verne transforms this preposterous premise into an elaborate comedy of obstinacy and a detailed travelogue of the Black Sea region. With his characteristic geographical precision, he guides readers through Ottoman and Russian territories, documenting customs, landscapes, and local color with the same attention to detail that made his science fiction so vivid.

The humor is broad-Kéraban's refusal to acknowledge the absurdity of his position, Van Mitten's practical exasperation, narrow escapes from dangers that resolve into misunderstandings. The tone remains light throughout; this is Verne in playful mode, using a thin comic plot as vehicle for geographical instruction and cultural observation.

Less famous than his science fiction masterpieces, Kéraban the Inflexible reveals Verne's versatility-his ability to apply his documentary methods to comedy and cultural exploration. The result is part adventure, part travelogue, part extended joke about human irrationality.

From the author of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea-a comic journey proving that the shortest distance between two points is definitely not around the entire Black Sea.