It employs many of the devices that had served well in his earlier novels: islands, cryptograms, surprise revelations of identity, technically advanced hardware and a solitary figure bent on revenge.

Sarcany tells Silas Toronthal, a corrupt banker, that he suspects the cipher is part of a plot to liberate Hungary from Habsburg-Austrian rule.

Enlisting the aid of two French carnival performers, Pescade and Matifou, he searches the Mediterranean for those who engineered the betrayal of his planned uprising.

Three of the most notable, Michael Strogoff, The Steam House (La Maison à vapeur) and Mathias Sandorf, are set in three of Europe's great Empires: the Russian, the British (in India), and the Austrian.

The novel also provides a critique of imperial administration: the Austrian police act in complete secrecy to arrest, court-martial and execute the radical Hungarians.

Others see similarities with the Hungarian freedom fighter Lajos Kossuth, who remained unreconciled to the 1867 compromise and Austrian prince Ludwig Salvator.

Verne may have first heard about the foiba beneath the Pisino Castle in Charles Yriarte's works Les Bords de l'Adriatique[3] and Trieste e l'Istria.

Mathias Sandorf was adapted for the stage as a five-act play by William Bertrand Busnach, a French novelist and playwright who adopted several novels for the theater.

The New York Times reported: "The spirit and vigor and fancy of a Jules Verne romance are not easily reproduced on the stage, and in this case there has been no attempt to do more than furnish a vehicle for the display of spectacular effects.

Georges Lampin directed another Mathias Sandorf in 1963 starring Louis Jourdan, Francisco Rabal, Renaud Mary and Serena Vergano.

Directed by Jean-Pierre Decourt it starred Hungarian actor István Bujtor as Mathias Sandorf, Ivan Desny as Zathmar, Amadeus August, Claude Giraud, Monika Peitsch, Sissy Höfferer, and Jacques Breuer.