Written in 1863,[1] but first published in 1994, the novel follows a young man who struggles unsuccessfully to live in a technologically advanced but culturally backward world.

However, his publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, did not accept the book because he thought that it was too unbelievable and that its sales prospects would be inferior to those of Verne's previous work, Five Weeks in a Balloon.

The novel's main character is 16-year-old Michel Dufrénoy, who graduates with a major in literature and the classics, but finds they have been forgotten in a futuristic world where only business and technology are valued.

Quinsonnas tells Michel that this is a job he can do in order to eat, have an apartment, and support himself while he continues working on a mysterious musical project that will bring him fame and fortune.

In despair, Michel spends his last bit of money on violets for Lucy, but finds that she has disappeared from her apartment, evicted when her grandfather lost his job as the university's last teacher of rhetoric.

In the climax of the story, the heartbroken Michel, bereft of friends and loved ones, wanders through the frozen, mechanized, electrical wonders of Paris.

The book describes in detail advances such as cars powered by internal combustion engines ("gas-cabs") together with the necessary supporting infrastructure such as gas stations and paved asphalt roads; elevated and underground passenger train systems and high-speed trains powered by magnetism and compressed air; skyscrapers; electric lights that illuminate entire cities at night; fax machines ("picture-telegraphs"); elevators; primitive computers that can send messages to each other in a network somewhat resembling the internet (described as sophisticated electrically powered mechanical calculators that can send information to each other across vast distances); wind power; automated security systems; the electric chair; and remote-controlled weapons systems, as well as weapons destructive enough to make war unthinkable.

The book also predicts the growth of suburbs and mass higher education (the opening scene has Dufrénoy attending a graduation of 250,000 students), department stores, and massive hotels.

It predicts that the entertainment industry would be dominated by lewd stage plays, often involving nudity and sexually explicit scenes.

The appearance of Verne's lost novel caused a stir among modern critics, who mostly received the book warmly, greeting it as "prescient and plausible".

The novel is also of importance to scholars of Verne's literary achievements, some of whom had long asserted that none of his works ever came close to prophesying the future of a whole civilization.