The Lost World
With those ominous parting words, 'tomorrow we disappear into the unknown,' Arthur Conan Doyle launches readers headlong into one of the most gripping adventure stories ever put to paper. At the centre of it all is Professor George Edward Challenger, a brilliant but combative scientist who claims that living dinosaurs, pterodactyls, and primitive ape-men still roam a remote plateau deep in the Amazon. The scientific establishment laughs at him. So he does what any self-respecting eccentric genius would do: he goes back to prove them all wrong. Accompanying Challenger on this reckless expedition are his sceptical rival Professor Summerlee, ambitious young journalist Edward Malone, and the seasoned adventurer Lord John Roxton. It's an unlikely party, and that friction between personalities gives the story a pleasing human texture alongside all the prehistoric spectacle. The jungle setting is vivid and genuinely unsettling, thick with foliage, hidden threats, and the creeping sense that civilisation is very far away. Will Challenger find his proof? And will any of them make it home to share it? First published in 1912, the novel was an immediate triumph with readers, and it's not hard to see why. Doyle writes with propulsive energy, balancing scientific curiosity with pure, breathless excitement. It remains a cornerstone of the adventure genre, and one that holds up remarkably well over a century later.
- Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
- Publisher: Fingerprint! Publishing
- Genre: Short Stories
- ISBN: 978-9354402197
- Pages: 256 pages