Ofoq is the publisher of the book rendered into Persian by Samin Nabipur, who has translated many books by renowned Western writers, including Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1854 novel “North and South” and Gavriel Savit’s debut novel “Anna and the Swallow Man”.

Verne’s 1865 tale of a trip to the moon is (as you’d expect from him) great fun, even if bits of it now seem, in retrospect, a little strange. 

It tells the story of the Baltimore Gun Club, a post-American Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts, and their attempts to build an enormous Columbiad space gun and launch three people—the Gun Club’s president, his Philadelphian armor-making rival, and a French poet—in a projectile with the goal of a Moon landing. 

Five years later, Verne wrote a sequel called “Around the Moon”.

The story is also notable in that Verne attempted to do some rough calculations as to the requirements for the cannon and in that, considering the comparative lack of empirical data on the subject at the time, some of his figures are remarkably accurate. 

However, his scenario turned out to be impractical for safe manned space travel since a much longer barrel would have been required to reach escape velocity while limiting acceleration to survivable limits for the passengers.

The character of Michel Ardan, the French member of the party in the novel, was inspired by the real-life photographer Felix Nadar.

Another Persian translation of the novel by Mohammad Nejabati was published by Qoqnus in Tehran in 2020.

Source:Tehran Times