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IN 1863, publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel rejected a new book by Jules Verne, Paris in the 20th Century, saying: “You took on an impossible task … and failed to pull it off.” He added: “I am really sorry, sorry about what I have to write here – I would consider it to be a disaster for your name to publish this work … You are not mature enough for this book, you will rewrite it again in twenty years.” Even more painful to Verne must have been the note scribbled on the manuscript: “No one today would believe your prophecies … we are not interested in them.”

Hetzel had just published Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon. He was the only Paris-based publisher to have accepted the manuscript submitted by 35-year-old Verne and seemed to be as concerned about his own reputation as that of the author. When I read the rejected manuscript, however, I knew what Verne went on to write, and had a pretty good idea of how life in Paris had changed by the early 1960s. It made Hetzel’s decision look foolish.

More than a century after young Verne’s publisher turned down his vision of life in Paris in 1960, the French publishing house Hachette reports massive sales for its 1994 edition. Some 131 years after the book was written, it has reached the bestseller list in France and caused a bidding war at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair for the rights to publish an English translation.

Verne, probably hurt by the rejection, stashed the manuscript in a trunk. It was not discovered until 1989, when his great grandson Jean put the family house in Toulon up for sale.

While the short novel seemed a wildly fantastic delirium to Hetzel, it reminds us reading it now of just how eerily far the fast-paced development of modem society can drift from its expected path. It is also a valuable insight into the deep-seated fears of a young man trying to cope with changes already occurring in the 1860s.

Hetzel was wrong to reject Verne’s manuscript. He was considered a talented publisher and although he may have had problems with Verne’s style and overly exaggerated characters, the novel would have been good fun in 1860 and could only have improved as time passed. Hachette undoubtedly has no regrets, however: a find like this does not come along often enough.

Verne’s prophecy is not limited to mere projections about the technical wizardry he imagined would be at the disposal of the Parisians of the 1960s – though he foresees cars, fax machines, the city’s elaborate metro and train system, gigantic cargo-carrying vessels, and even describes a version of the Eiffel Tower. But the story is really about a young man’s unhappiness in a society that has gone completely wrong. Verne’s Paris of the future shows rampaging capitalism, a world where there is no longer any room for the arts, where everyone is literate but doesn’t read, and music has continued a decline triggered by Wagner.

Paris in the 20th Century opens with the prize-giving ceremony of the General Society for Educational Credit, a profitable university with 157 342 students and a corporate structure complete with a board of directors, shareholders and abundant capital. Science is the main subject of instruction; the humanities have been sacrificed because they generate no profit. Michel Jerome Dufrenoy, Verne’s hero, collects his award for Latin verse, much to the amusement of the audience and the disdain of his family. His uncle pulls him from his studies and finds him a job at a bank. Michel begins his unhappy life in the unrelenting capitalist world where crowds in the streets rush by, urged on by the “demon of fortune”, laughing is discouraged and – even more bizarre to French sensibilities – people bolt their food. In a society obsessed with technology, life is geared to efficiency.

Michel tries to buy a book by Victor Hugo. “Victor Hugo?” asks the puzzled salesclerk. “What did he write?” As stock exchange data pour into the bank at all hours, we learn that entire forests are not only used for heating but also for paper. Parisians in the 1960s live in structures with as many as 12-storeys, a far cry from Baron Haussmann’s six floor buildings of the 19th century that line the city’s streets today.

Life as imagined by Verne is nothing more than a gigantic marketplace where people no longer fight over ideas but only for riches. Verne seems to mourn the absence of bravery in soldiers who no longer go into hand-to-hand combat but fight on distant technological battlefields. Michel works briefly at rewriting classic plays to suit contemporary, pablum-fed audiences. Here Verne seems to have predicted the TV sitcom complete with fake clapping on the soundtrack.

The author even predicts the French government’s current attempt to curb the pollution of the French language with English words and expressions. Verne predicts English would reign as the language of science – a fact currently bemoaned by many French researchers – while French would remain the language of diplomacy. In fact, because diplomacy became nothing but lies, French fell into disrepute.

Michel’s only pleasure comes from his tiny circle of fellow artist friends and a young woman who catches his fancy. In Paris in the 20th Century Verne rants against women’s liberation, or what he calls the evolution of Parisiennes into American women. He says they speak seriously about serious affairs, dress poorly and have no taste. There are no more women in France under the age of 95, a helpful friend of Michel’s explains. Verne predicts women in the workforce, a declining birthrate, and horrors of horrors, more and more illegitimate children.

In the preface to the book, Verne scholar Piero Gondolo della Riva says Paris in the 20th Century negates the theory that the author was optimistic by nature about human destiny and the progress of science and only became pessimistic later in life.

The book also shows that prophecies have their merit, even hidden away in a trunk. One hundred years is a short time.