This book was published first in 1897 as a response to Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. It is an adventure story following the journey of an unnamed narrator through the Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean aboard the ship, the Halbrane.But strange as the journey may be, it's nowhere near as strange as what they will find waiting at its end. Neither Poe nor Verne had actually visited the remote Kerguelen Islands, located in the south Indian Ocean, but their works are some of the few literary (as opposed to exploratory) references to the archipelago.This book was published first in 1897 as a response to Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. It is an adventure story following the journey of an unnamed narrator through the Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean aboard the ship, the Halbrane.But strange as the journey may be, it's nowhere near as strange as what they will find waiting at its end. Neither Poe nor Verne had actually visited the remote Kerguelen Islands, located in the south Indian Ocean, but their works are some of the few literary (as opposed to exploratory) references to the archipelago.