The Mysterious Island The Mysterious Island The Mysterious Island () is a novel by Jules Verne, published in 1874. The original edition, published by Hetzel, contains a number of illustrations by Jules Férat. The novel is a crossover sequel to Verne's famous "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and "In Search of the Castaways", though its themes are vastly different from those books. An early draft of the novel, initially rejected by Verne's publisher and wholly reconceived before publication, was titled "Shipwrecked Family: Marooned With Uncle Robinson," seen as indicating the influence of the novels "Robinson Crusoe" and "The Swiss Family Robinson". Verne
Despair (novel) novels, with it trailing only "Lolita" (1955). However, Nabokov's biographer Brian Boyd seemed to have ambivalent feelings toward "Despair", noting that although "Nabokov's sheer intelligence crackles in every line... the book's style... seems sadly lacking in its structure... It never quite convinces, and page after page that would make one tingle with excitement in another context can here only intermittently overcome one's remoteness from a story whose central premise fails to merit the suspension of disbelief". "Despair" is the second Nabokov novel to feature unreliable narration from a first-person point of view, the first being "The Eye" with the character