Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea as an inhabitant of British Colonial India, "is an inhabitant of an oppressed country". Verne took the name "Nautilus" from one of the earliest successful submarines, built in 1800 by Robert Fulton, who later invented the first commercially successful steamboat. Fulton's submarine was named after the paper nautilus because it had a sail. Three years before writing his novel, Jules Verne also studied a model of the newly developed French Navy submarine "Plongeur" at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, which inspired him for his definition of the "Nautilus". The breathing apparatus used by "Nautilus" divers is depicted as an untethered version
The Twenty-Seventh City welcomed the book: "Jonathan Franzen has written a novel of our times; so imaginatively and expansively of our times, that it seems ahead of them." In "The New York Times", "American Heritage" contributing editor Peter Andrews wrote, "Make no mistake about it, "The Twenty-Seventh City" is an impressive debut by a gifted young writer... It's a riveting piece of fiction that lingers in the mind." Reviewing the author's second novel "Strong Motion", critic Laura Shapiro at "Newsweek" discussed "The Twenty-Seventh City"'s "brilliance" and Franzen's "prodigious gifts"; she described the novel as "a huge and masterly drama of St. Louis under