Penguin Books Ltd

Tough times don't last. Tough people do. In this book, the author shows that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world.

Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan Mountstuart's - lived from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century - contains more than its fair share of both. As a writer who finds inspiration with Hemingway in Paris and Virginia Woolf in London, as a spy recruited by Ian Fleming and betrayed in the war.

One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days. He sets off with his valet Passepartout, and passes through exotic lands and dangerous locations, they seize whatever transportation is at hand - whether train or elephant - overcoming set-backs and racing against the clock.