Sign-In
Cart
The Vanished Diamond: A New Translation
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jan 28 2025
Pages: 246
Weight: 0.67
Height: 0.61 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A magnificent diamond discovered in African earth. A mysterious theft. And a young engineer who must solve the crime to clear his name.
Cyprien Méré, a French mining engineer in South Africa's diamond fields, discovers a spectacular gem-the Star of the South, a diamond of unprecedented size and brilliance. But when the stone mysteriously vanishes, Cyprien becomes the prime suspect. To clear his name and win the hand of Alice Watkins, the mine owner's daughter, he must solve the mystery and unmask the real thief.
Jules Verne wrote The Vanished Diamond in 1884, drawing on extensive research about diamond geology and mining operations. The novel demonstrates his characteristic educational mission-readers learn genuinely about how diamonds form, how they're extracted, and how the mining industry operates. The mystery plot is competently constructed, providing conventional detective story satisfactions.
Yet the novel is fundamentally compromised by its colonial framework. South Africa exists in Verne's imagination primarily as resource to be exploited by European enterprise. African peoples appear as laborers, servants, or background elements without complex subjectivity or agency. The narrative assumes European right to extract wealth from African territory without considering indigenous perspectives or interests. African characters, when individualized at all, are portrayed through racist stereotypes.
Verne never questions the colonial system itself-he portrays individual Europeans as more or less ethical, but treats European presence in Africa and appropriation of its mineral wealth as natural and legitimate. The entire drama unfolds among Europeans competing for wealth extracted from African soil, with African labor making that extraction possible but treated as unproblematic rather than as exploitation requiring justification.
Modern readers will find the colonial ideology pervasive and inescapable, the treatment of African characters deeply offensive, and the failure to engage with colonial violence and injustice profoundly limiting.
From the author of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea-adventure fiction that demonstrates how talented writers could unreflectively reproduce colonial assumptions.
Also from
Petault, David
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A New Translation in Modern Accessible English
Nietzsche, Friedrich
Paperback
Journey to the Center of the Earth: A New Translation in Modern Accessible English
Verne, Jules
Paperback
From the Earth to the the moon: A New Translation in Modern Accessible English
Verne, Jules
Paperback
In Search of the Castaways (The Children of Captain Grant): A New Translation in Modern Accessible English
Verne, Jules
Paperback
Magellania (The Survivors of the "Jonathan"): A New Translation in Modern Accessible English
Verne, Jules
Paperback
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (In Search of Lost Time Vol. 2): A New Translation
Proust, Marcel
Paperback
A Country Doctor And Other Stories: In the Penal Colony, The Judgment: A New Translation
Kafka, Franz
Paperback
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: A New Translation in Modern Accessible English
Verne, Jules
Paperback
A Mexican Drama, The Blockade Runners, The Rebels Of The Bounty: A New Translation
Verne, Jules
Paperback
Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon ("La Jangada"): A New Translation in Modern Accessible English
Verne, Jules
Paperback
An Antarctic Mystery (Sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym): A New Translation
Verne, Jules
Paperback
The Adventures of Captain Hatteras: A New Translation in Modern Accessible English
Verne, Jules
Paperback
Michel Strogoff (From Moscow To Irkutsk): A New Translation in Modern Accessible English
Verne, Jules
Paperback
Also in
Fiction Anthologies
On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings
Pirsig, Robert M.
Pirsig, Wendy K.
Hardcover
James Weldon Johnson: Writings (Loa #145): The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man / Along This Way / Essays and Editorials / Selected Poems
Johnson, James Weldon
Hardcover
Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Shelley, Mary
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Stoker, Bram
Paperback
Sez I to Myself: The Collected Essays of Frank and Malachy McCourt
McCourt, Malachy
McCourt, Frank
Hardcover
Here in New England: Unforgettable Stories of People, Places, and Memories That Connect Us All.
Allen, Mel
Paperback
The Greek Tragedies: Seventeen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
Sophocles
Euripides
Aeschylus
Paperback
Learn Russian with Beginner Stories: Interlinear Russian to English
Van Den End, Kees
Hyplern, Bermuda Word
Gettys, Serafima
Paperback
Obvious Adams -- The Story of a Successful Businessman: New Business Edition
Updegraff, Robert R.
Paperback
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings: Poems, Tales, Essays, and Reviews
Poe, Edgar Allan
Hardcover
Bookin' in the Big House: What I Learned Leading a Women's Prison Book Club
Devoto, Pat Cunningham
Paperback
Japanese Folktales for Language Learners: Bilingual Legends and Fables in Japanese and English (Free Online Audio Recording)
Sato, Anna
Sato, Eriko
Paperback
The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, volume 1
Pedraza, Pilar
Fager, Anders
Cubas, Cristina Fernández
Paperback
The Serpent Mound, Adams County, Ohio (Facsimile Reprint)
Randall, Emilius Oviatt
Randall, E. O.
Paperback