Lost Face

The biography of Jack London (1876-1916) is as prodigious as the work he bequeathed to us and that would make him world famous: narratives of the high seas (The Cruise of the Snark, 1911) and snowy landscapes (The Son of the Wolf, 1900), journeys to the dark side of industrial society (The People of the Abyss, 1903), among wanderers without a threshing floor or edge (Vagabonds Crossing the Night, 1907), a fertile correspondence and autobiographical texts, such as Memoirs of an Alcoholic – John Barleycorn (1913). One of the most romantic figures of his time, self-taught and an eloquent orator, he was also a man of a thousand trades: factory worker in California, prospector in the Klondike and war correspondent in Japan. A convinced socialist, he combined the thirst for adventure with the hunger for social justice, and individual courage with the defense of solidarity among men.