Jules Verne’s “The Vanished Diamond” from 1884 takes us to the South African diamond fields. Victor Cyprien is a mining engineer who falls in love with Alice, the daughter of the rich landowner Watkins. He however is not willing to give his daughter to a poor man. Cyprien decides to earn a fortune by digging in a mining claim. Things do not go as planned. But he does not give up. If you cannot dig up a diamond, you create it artificially.
Will this be enough to win the hand of Alice? Can a diamond change one’s future? Is fortune more important than one’s happiness?
Jules Verne (1828–1905) was a French novelist who mostly wrote adventure fiction inspired by the scientific advances of the 19th century. With the help of editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel he wrote a series of books called “Extraordinary Travels”, which includes “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1864), “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (1870), and “Around the World in Eighty Days” (1873). Widely popular with both children and adults, Verne is one of the most translated authors of all times, and still inspires people the world over.
