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The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories
The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories
Oct 19, 2024 6:37 AM

Author:Jack London,Andrew Sinclair,James Dickey

The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories

The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories collects some of Jack London's most profound and moving allegorical tales. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Andrew Sinclair with an introduction by James Dickey.

The Call of the Wild, London's masterpiece about a dog learning to survive in the wilderness, sees pampered pet Buck snatched from his home and set to work as a sled-dog. White Fang, set in the frozen tundra and boreal forests of Canada's Yukon territory, is the story of a wolf-dog struggling to survive in a human society every bit as violent as the natural world. This volume of Jack London's famed stories of the North also includes 'Batard', in which an abused dog takes revenge on his owner; and 'Love of Life', in which an injured prospector, abandoned by his partner, must struggle home alone through the wilderness, stalked by a lone wolf.

In his introduction, James Dickey probes London's strong personal and literary identification with the wolf-dog as a symbol and totem. Andrew Sinclair, London's official biographer and the volume's editor, provides a brief account of London's life as a sailor, desperado, socialist, adventurer and acclaimed author.

Jack London (1876-1916) was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco, California. By the age of sixteen he had left school, worked in a canning factory, spent time as an oyster pirate and been a member of the Fish Patrol in the San Francisco Bay. In 1893 he joined a sealing cruise, which took him as far abroad as Japan. In 1896 he was caught up in the gold rush to the Klondike river in north-west Canada, which became the inspiration for The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906).

If you enjoyed The Call of the Wild, you might like Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, also available in Penguin Classics.

Reviews

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Brilliant... Byatt's fiction, like Matisse's art, pays close attention to colours and contours of surfaces, then probes beneath them to reveal further suprises

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Exquisite triptych... The Matisse Stories is richly drawn and touches upon things that matter to people

—— People

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Praise for Catherine Alliott

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Warm, witty and wise

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A huge treat. Hilarious yet poignant

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Her writing is both intelligent and sparkling

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Hilarious and full of surprises

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Noble is the mistress of the tearjerking message of love

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A moving and warm-hearted story of friendship and love . . . Elizabeth Noble writes wonderfully real and relatable characters and then puts their lives under the microscope, weaving their stories with tenderness and humanity

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Other People's Husbands is a compelling, honest and uplifting tale which will have you hooked from first page to last

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An artful game of distortion... Clever handling

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A curious piece of autobiographical fiction

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A wisecracking thriller hightailing between love and betrayal, with serious counter-espionage credentials thrown in... This is ultimately a book about writing, wordplay and knowingness

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No contemporary novelist is more enthralled by what goes on inside the human skull than Ian McEwan... Sweet Tooth, which juxtaposes contrasting casts of mind, reminds you that, as well as intelligence, the intelligence service fascinates McEwan... Always excellent at conjuring up places and periods on the cusp of dramatic change... McEwan atmospherically resurrects the strife-ridden Britain of 1972 -73... Similarities and contrasts between the mentality and mind games of the secret service and those of the creative writer are increasingly brought to the fore. Doubling back and forth across genre boundaries, Sweet Tooth takes risks: narrative loiterings and twists whose purpose isn’t at first apparent, a payoff that is long delayed. But – ideally read more than once – this acute, witty novel is a winningly cunning addition to McEwan’s fictional surveys of intelligence

—— Peter Kemp , Sunday Time

Must read... Intrigue, love and mutual betrayal by a master of the art

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McEwan, as always, presents an engaging narrator... The plot is fantastic... McEwan plays with the readers expectations, and surpasses them all with a fabulous ending that makes me itch to re-read this superb novel all over again. Sweet Tooth marks another triumph for a brilliant British author

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A pleasing, tricksy beast with a subsumed sense of metatextuality likely to be pleasing to his fans

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A triumphant shedding of genre limitations

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This most cunning of authors entertains and manipulates his readers. Sweet Tooth is a masterclass in the art of fiction

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McEwan’ssmoothly contrived thriller hightails between love and betrayal, with serious counter-espionage credentials thrown in

—— Sunday Telegraph Seven

An expertly crafted thriller written with a bucketload of suspense and wit

—— Hannah Britt , Daily Express

As richly textured as anything Ian McEwan has written

—— Mai

Brilliantly cunning… It’s a story of love, betrayal and duplicity, with the most startling deception reserved for the final pages

—— Mail on Sunday (You)

Playful, clever, knowing and full of stories

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Beyond virtuoso twists and turns, McEwan lays out the foreign landscape of 40 years ago – from smoky pubs to fuming punditry – with wry, affectionate panache

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Tricksy, but satisfying

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