The Night-Born

Early in “the unluckiest year of his life” (1913), during which his dream home in California’s Sonoma Valley burnt down, Jack London, aged thirty-seven, published the short-story collection The Night-Born (Labor, 329). The ten tales in it range from negligible potboilers to such gems as the evocative sketch of a soldier’s life “War”, and the suspenseful fight story “The Mexican”, set during the Mexican Revolution (c. 1910–1920) and embodying London’s “finest allegory of the revolutionary spirit” (Labor, Leitz, Shepard, xxix).