Library of Babel
10339 Le morti concentriche
Jack London. Edited and with an introduction by Jorge Luis Borges
1975 I ed. .
Language: Italian
A selection of five short stories, a testimony to the effectiveness and variety of the American writer, journalist and playwright Jack London.
A gold prospector in Alaska, then a soldier, a pearl fisherman, a seal hunter, a convinced socialist, and then a writer and journalist, London was a man who experienced misery and austerity, and who in his work was able to combine two opposing ideologies: the Darwinian doctrine of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for life, and a boundless love for humanity. This collection highlights the wealth of themes and possibilities that coexist in his writing: it is only towards the end of The House of Mapuhi that the reader understands who the real protagonist is; The Law of Life reveals to us an atrocious destiny, accepted by all with naturalness and even innocence; Lost Face is the salvation of a man from torture by means of a terrible artifice; The Minions of Midas unfolds the ruthless mechanism of a secret society of anarchists; The Shadow and the Flash returns and develops a traditional literary motif: the power of becoming invisible.