Michael Strogoff, Or The Courier of the Czar Illustrated

Telegraph lines fall silent as Feofar Khan's rebellion cuts the Russian Far East away from the imperial center. In Jules Verne's Michael Strogoff, Or The Courier of the Czar Illustrated, the Tsar entrusts Michael Strogoff with a concealed mission: reach besieged Irkutsk and warn its governor before the traitor Ivan Ogareff can gain his confidence and deliver the city to the rebels.

Michael travels under the name Nicolas Korpanoff. The route across Siberia brings him together with Nadia Fedor, who has permission to join her exiled father in Irkutsk, and with rival correspondents Harry Blount and Alcide Jolivet. Their paths repeatedly separate and converge, giving the journey both urgency and an observing public. Michael's disguise becomes harder to preserve at Omsk, his home city, where an encounter with his mother exposes the personal cost of remaining silent.

Capture by the Tartar forces turns speed into endurance. Ogareff knows the courier's purpose and uses Michael's family ties to identify him, placing the message and its bearer in the same danger. Verne sets an intimate test of loyalty inside a large geographic adventure: false identity, distance, military upheaval, and divided allegiances all bear upon whether vital knowledge can reach Irkutsk in time.