South Star (novel)

The first publication of the novel was in the Etzel magazine Magasin d'Éducation et de Récréation from January 1 to December 15, 1884, under the title Southern Star. In the country of diamonds ”(“ L'Étoile du sud. Le Pays des diamants ”). In a separate edition, the novel (under the same title) was released on November 6, 1884.
This novel (with 60 illustrations by Leon Bennett), together with the novel " The Archipelago on Fire ", was included in the nineteenth "double" volume of " Extraordinary Travels " - it was released on November 13, 1884.
In Russian, the novel was first published in 1886 in Moscow, in the printing house of V. Richter. In 1907, he entered the 29th volume of the Complete Works of J. Verne, published by P. P. Soikin ^[1] .

The book is divided into twenty chapters:

• Chapter One Oh, these French!
• Chapter Two Vandergartova placer
• Chapter Three First development
• Chapter Four . Diamond seekers mores
• Chapter Five Serious experience
• Chapter Six Surprise
• Chapter Seven . John Watkins ponders
• Chapter Eight . "South Star"
• Chapter Nine . Charges on the road
• Chapter Ten . On the Transvaal
• Chapter Eleven Conspiracy
• Chapter Twelve . Betrayal
• Chapter Thirteen African horse racing
• Chapter Fourteen . Talking ostrich
• Chapter Fifteen Magic cave
• Chapter Sixteen Return
• Chapter Seventeen . Venetian justice
• Chapter eighteen . Mines of a new kind
• Chapter Nineteen . Statue of the commander
• Chapter Twenty . The disappeared "Star"

South Africa, end of the 19th century, the era of the diamond rush. French engineer Cyprien Mere asks the local owner of the diamond mine Watkins, the hand of his daughter Alice, but receives an arrogant refusal. Desperate to make a fortune in the mines, he creates the world's first artificial diamond "South Star" - the largest diamond in the world. However, the diamond soon disappears, and suspicion falls on the servant of Cyprien, Kafra Matakita. Mataquit, fearing reprisals from the English court, runs deep into Africa, and a team of volunteer hunters follows him. In addition to Siprien, the team consists of three of his rivals, each of whom dreams of marrying Alice. However, they all die: one from a fever, the second - when hunting an elephant, the third - entangled in a network of birds. With the help of his loyal assistants - the hunter Faramon Barthes, Kaffir Bardik and the Chinese Li - Siprien manages to find Matakit in the capital of the native king in Kafraria. Despite Siprien’s protests, Matakita is being arrested. Soon, by pure chance, the diamond itself is located - in the stomach of Alice’s favorite, the ostrich of Dada, but along the way it turns out that the diamond is natural, and Mere’s experiment failed. It turns out that the diamond found Matakit and put it in the furnace created by Siprien to console his master in his futile attempts to create the diamond artificially. The contract owner of the diamond is not Mere, but Watkins. However, the fate of the lovers is decided by the case - once upon a time Watkins, using a miscarriage of justice, deceived a friend of Mere, the old Boer Jacobus Vandergaart and appropriated his mine. Having regained his property, Vandergaart gives the diamond to Siprien and Alice, as a wedding gift. Cyprien and Alice get married and leave for France. The fate of the diamond ends unexpectedly - because of a rare "disease", it self-destructs.

The diamond from the novel had a real prototype - the Star of South Africa diamond found in 1869 weighing 83.5 carats . They cut a 47.7-carat diamond from it.

• “ Extraordinary Travels ”
• The first Boer War
• Diamond

• "South Star" in the Science Fiction Laboratory